UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


THE  GIFT  OF 

MAY  TREAT  MORRISON 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

ALEXANDER  F  MORRISON 


MODERN   LEADERS: 


BEING  A  SERIES  OF 


BIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCHES. 


BY  JUSTIN    MCCARTHY, 

Author  of  "Lady  Judith :  A  Tale  of  Two  Continents?  etc. 


NEW  YORK: 


677  BROADWAY  and  214  and  216   MERCER  STREET. 
1872. 


CT 
IIS 


CONTENTS. 


QUEEN  VICTORIA  AND  HER  SUBJECTS 7 

THE  REAL  Louis  NAPOLEON 18 

EUGENIE,  EMPRESS  OF  THE  FRENCH 25 

THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES 35 

THE  KING  OF  PRUSSIA 45 

VICTOR  EMANUEL,  KING  OF  ITALY 55 

Louis  ADOLPH  THIERS 66 

PRINCE  NAPOLEON 77 

S3     THE  DUKE  OF  CAMBRIDGE 85 

CV     BRIGHAM  YOUNG 96 

s    THE  Lir.F.iiAL  TRIUMVIRATE  OF  ENGLAND 106 

ENGLISH  POSITIVISTS 116 

2     P^XGLISH  TORYISM  AND  ITS  LEADERS 126 


GEORGE  ELIOT  "  AND  GEORGE  LEWIS 136 

OB 


n 

5    GEORGE  SAND 145 

EDWARD  BULWER  AND  LORD  LYTTON 156 

Mm 

4    "  PAR  NOBILE  FRATRUM — THE  Two  NEWMANS." 167 

g    ARCHBISHOP  MANNING 175 

K 

•&     JOHN  RUSKIN 183 

u. 

CHARLES  READE 192 

7=     EXILE- WORLD  OF  LONDON 202 

\y 

THE  REVEREND  CHARLES  KINGSLEY 211 

MR.  JAMES  ANTHONY  FROUDE. 223 

SCIENCE  AND  ORTHODOXY  IN  ENGLAND.     .  234 


432560 


INTRODUCTION. 


THE  sketches  which  make  up  this  volume  are  neither  purely  critical  nor 
merely  biographical.  They  endeavor  to  give  the  American  reader  a  clear 
and  just  idea  of  each  individual  in  his  intellect,  his  character,  his  place  in  poli- 
tics, letters,  and  society.  In  some  instances  I  have  written  of  friends  whom  I 
know  personally  and  well ;  in  others  of  men  with  whom  I  have  but  slight  ac- 
quaintance ;  in  others  still  of  persons  whom  I  have  only  seen.  But  in  every 
instance  those  whom  I  describe  are  persons  whom  I  have  been  able  to  study 
on  the  spot,  whose  character  and  doings  I  have  heard  commonly  discussed  by 
those  who  actually  knew  them.  In  no  case  whatever  are  the  opinions  I  have 
given  drawn  merely  from  books  and  newspapers.  This  value,  therefore,  these 
essays  may  have  to  an  American,  that  they  are  not  such  descriptions  as  any  of 
us  might  be  enabled  to  put  into  print  by  the  mere  help  of  studj7  and  reading; 
descriptions  for  example  such  as  one  might  make  of  Henry  VIII.  or  Voltaire. 
They  are  in  every  instance,  even  when  intimate  and  direct  personal  acquaint- 
ance least  assist  them,  the  result  of  close  observation  and  that  appreciation  of 
the  originals  which  comes  from  habitual  intercourse  with  those  who  know 
them  and  submit  them  to  constant  criticism. 

I  have  not  made  any  alteration  in  the  essays  which  were  written  some 
years  ago.  Let  them  stand  as  portraits  bearing  that  date.  If  1872  has  in  any 
instance  changed  the  features  and  the  fortunes  of  1869  and  1870,  it  cannot 
make  untrue  what  then  was  true.  What  I  wrote  in  1869  of  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  for  example,  will  probably  not  wholly  apply  to  the  Prince  of  Wales 
to-day.  We  all  believe  that  he  has  lately  changed  for  the  better.  But  what  I 
wrote  then  I  still  believe  was  true  then ;  and  it  is  a  fair  contribution  to  history, 
which  does  not  consent  to  rub  out  yesterday  because  of  to-day.  I  wrote  of  a 
"  Liberal  Triumvirate  "  of  England  when  the  phrase  was  an  accurate  expres- 
sion. It  would  hardly  be  accurate  now.  To-day  Mr.  Mill  does  not  appear  in 
political  life  and  Mr.  Bright  has  been  an  exile,  owing  to  his  health,  for  nearly 
two  years  from  the  scenes  of  parliamentary  debate  and  triumph.  But  the 
portraits  of  the  men  do  not  on  that  account  need  any  change.  Even  where 
some  reason  has  been  shown  me  for  a  modification  of  my  own  judgment  I  have 
still  preferred  to  leave  the  written  letter  as  it  is.  A  distinguished  Italian  friend 
has  impressed  on  me  that  King  Victor  Emanuel  is  personally  a  much  more 
ambitious  man  than  I  have  painted  him.  My  friend  has  had  far  better  oppor- 
tunities of  judging  than  I  ever  could  have  had;  but  I  gave  the  best  opinion  I 
could,  and  still  holding  to  it  prefer  to  let  it  stand,  to  be  taken  for  what  it  is 
worth. 

I  think  I  may  fairly  claim  to  have  anticipated  in  some  of  the  political 
sketches,  that  of  Louis  Napoleon,  for  instance,  the  judgment  of  events  and 
history,  and  the  real  strength  of  certain  characters  and  institutions. 

These  sketches  had  a  gratifying  welcome  from  the  American  public  as 
they  appeared  in  the  "  Galaxy."  I  hope  they  may  be  thought  worth  reading 
over  again  and  keeping  in  their  collected  form. 

JUSTIN  MCCARTHY. 

48  GOWEB  STREET,  BEDFORD  .SQUARE,  LONDON,  July  31,  1872. 


QUEEN  VICTORIA  AND.  HER, SUBJECTS. 

**    A    ND  when  you  hear  historians  tell  of  thrones,  and  those  who  sat  upon 
_/~\_     them,  let  it  be  as  men  now  gaze  upon  the  mammoth's  bones,  and 
wonder  what  old  world  such  things  could  see." 

So  sang  Byron  half  a  century  ago,  and  great  critics  condemned  his  verse,  and 
called  him  a  "  surly  Democrat "  because  he  ventured  to  put  such  sentiments  and 
hopes  into  rhyme.  The  thrones  of  Europe  have  not  diminished  in  number  since 
Byron's  day,  although  they  have  changed  and  rechanged  their  occupants  ;  and  the 
one  only  grand  effort  at  the  establishment  of  a  new  Republic — that  of  France  in 
1848 — went  down  into  dust  and  ashes.  Naturally,  therefore,  the  tendency  in 
Europe  is  to  regard  the  monarchical  principle  as  having  received  a  new  lease  and 
charter  of  life,  and  to  talk  of  the  republican  principle  as  an  exotic  forced  for  a 
moment  into  a  premature  and  morbid  blossom  upon  European  soil,  but  as  com- 
pletely unsuited  to  the  climate  and  the  people  as  the  banyan  or  the  cocoa  tree. 
I  do  not,  for  myself,  quite  agree  in  this  view  of  the  aspect  of  affairs.  Of 
course,  if  one  were  inclined  to  discuss  the  question  fairly,  he  must  begin  by 
asking  what  people  mean  when  they  talk  of  the  republican  principle.  What  is 
the  republican  principle  ?  When  you  talk  of  a  Republic,  do  you  mean  an  ag- 
gressive, conquering,  domineering  State,  ruled  by  faction  and  living  on  war,  like 
the  Commonwealth  of  Rome  ?  or  a  Republic  like  that  planned  by  Washington, 
which  should  repudiate  all  concern  in  foreign  politics  or  foreign  conquest  ?  Do 
you  mean  a  Federal  Republic,  like  that  of  the  United  States,  or  one  with  a  cen- 
tralized power,  like  the  French  Republic  of  1848  ?  Do  you  mean  a  Republic  like 
that  of  Florence,  in  which  the  people  were  omnipotent,  or  a  Republic  like  that 
of  Venice,  in  which  the  people  had  no  power  at  all  ?  Do  you  mean  a  Republic 
like  that  of  Switzerland,  in  which  the  President  is  next  to  nobody,  or  a  Republic 
like  that  of  Poland,  which  was  ornamented  by  a  King  ?  In  truth,  the  phrase  "  re- 
publican principle  "  has  no  set  meaning.  It  means  just  what  the  man  who  uses 
it  wishes  to  express.  If,  however,  we  understand  it  to  mean,  in  this  instance, 
the  principle  of  popular  self-government,  then  it  is  obvious  that  Europe  has 
made  immense  progress  in  that  direction  since  Byron  raged  against  the  crimes 
of  Kings.  If  it  means  the  opposite  to  the  principle  of  Divine  Right  or  Legiti- 
macy, or  even  personal  loyalty — loyalty  of  the  old-time,  chivalric,  enthusiastic 
fashion — then  it  must  be  owned  that  it  shows  all  over  Europe  the  mark  of 
equal  progress.  The  ancient,  romantic,  sentimental  loyalty ;  the  loyalty  which 
reverenced  the  Sovereign  and  was  proud  to  abase  itself  before  him  ;  the  loyalty 
of  the  Cavaliers  ;  the  loyalty  which  went  wild  over  "  Oh,  Richard  !  Oh,  mon 
Roi !  "  is  dead  and  gone — its  relics  a  thing  to  be  stared  at,  and  wondered  over, 
and  preserved  for  a  landmark  in  the  progress  of  the  world — just  like  the  mam- 
moth's bones. 

The  model  Monarchy  of  Europe  is,  beyond  dispute,  that  of  Great  Britain. 
In  England  there  is  an  almost  absolute  self-government ;  the  English  peo- 
ple can  have  anything  whatever  which  they  may  want  by  insisting  on  it  and  agi- 
tating a  little  for  it.  The  Sovereign  has  long  ceased  to  interfcie  in  the  progress 
of  national  affairs.  I  can  only  recollect  one  instance,  during  my  observation,  in 
which  Queen  Victoria  put  her  veto  on  a  bill  passed  by  Parliament,  and  that  was 
«n  an  occasion  when  it  was  discovered,  at  the  last  moment,  that  the  Lords  and 


8  QUEEN  VICTORIA  AND  HER  SUBJECTS. 

Commons  had  passed  a  bill  which  had  a  dreadful  technical  blunder  in  it,  and 
the  only  way  out  of  the  difficulty  w^s/to  be^  of  the  Queen  to  refuse  it  her  sanc- 
tion, which  her  Majesty  did  accordingly,  and  the;  blunder  was  set  right  in  the 
following  session.  £F-  a;  JPrsrKe.,  JVT»n.istgr  weje  to  ^announce  to  the  House  of 
Commons,  to-morrow,  that  the  Queen  ha<f  'boxed'his  ears,  it  would  not  create  a 
whit  more  amazement  than  if  he  were  to  say,  no  matter  in  what  graceful  and 
diplomatic  periphrasis,  that  her  Majesty  was  unwilling  to  agree  to  some  meas- 
ure which  her  faithful  Commons  desired  to  see  passed  into  law. 

Nothing  did  Mr.  Disraeli  more  harm,  nothing  brought  greater  contempt  on 
him  than  his  silly  attempts  last  session  to  induce  the  Commons  to  believe,  by 
vague  insinuations  and  covert  allusions,  that  the  Queen  had  a  personal  leaning 
toward  his  policy  and  himself.  So  long  ago  as  the  time  of  the  free  trade  strug- 
gle, the  Tories,  for  all  their  hereditary  loyalty,  complained  of  and  protested 
against  the  silent  presence  of  Prince  Albert  in  the  Peers'  gallery  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  an  attempt  to  influence  the  Parliament 
improperly,  and  to  interfere  with  the  freedom  of  debate.  No  one  has  anything 
to  say  against  the  Queen  which  carries  any  weight  or  is  worth  listening  to.  She 
is  undoubtedly  a  woman  of  virtue  and  good  sense.  So  good  a  woman,  I  ven- 
ture to  think,  never  before  reigned  over  any  people,  and  that  she  is  not  a  great 
woman,  an  Elizabeth,  a  Catherine  of  Russia,  or  even  an  Isabella  of  Castile,  is 
surely  rather  to  the  advantage  than  otherwise  of  the  monarchical  institution  in 
its  present  stage  of  existence.  Here,  then,  one  might  think,  if  anywhere  and 
ever,  the  principle  of  personal  loyalty  has  a  fair  chance  and  a  full  justification. 
A  man  might  vindicate  his  loyalty  to  Queen  Victoria  in  the  name  of  liberty  it- 
self; nay,  he  might  justify  it  by  an  appeal  to  the  very  principle  of  democracy. 
Yet  one  must  be  blind,  who,  living  in  England  and  willing  to  observe,  does  not 
see  that  the  old,  devoted  spirit  of  personal  loyalty  is  dead  and  buried.  It  is 
gone  !  it  is  a  memory  !  You  may  sing  a  poetic  lament  for  it  if  you  will,  as  Schil- 
ler did  for  the  gods  of  Hellas  ;  you  may  break  into  passionate  rhetoric,  if  you 
can,  over  its  extinction,  as  Burke  did  for  the  death  of  the  age  of  Chivalry.  It  is 
gone,  and  I  firmly  believe  it  can  never  be  revived  or  restored. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  there  are  many  persons  in  England  who  feel  any 
strong  objection  to  the  Monarchy,  or  warmly  desire  to  see  a  Republic  substituted 
for  it.  I  know  in  England  several  theoretical  republicans — they  are  to  be  met 
with  in  almost  any  company.  I  have  never  met  with  anyone  Englishman  living 
in  England,  who  showed  any  anxious,  active  interest  in  the  abolition  of  the 
Monarchy.  I  do  not  know  any  one  who  objects  to  drink  the  usual  loyal  toasts 
at  a  public  dinner,  or  betrays  any  conscientious  reluctance  to  listen  to  the  un- 
meaning eulogy  which  it  is  the  stereotyped  fashion  for  the  chairman  of  every 
such  banquet  to  heap  on  "  Her  Majesty  and  the  rest  of  the  Royal  Family."  But 
this  sort  of  thing,  if  it  ever  had  any  practical  meaning,  has  now  none.  It  has 
reached  that  stage  at  which  profession  and  practice  are  always  understood  to  be 
quite  different  things.  Every  one  says  at  church  that  he  is  a  miserable  sinner ; 
no  one  is  supposed  really  to  believe  anything  of  the  sort.  Every  one  has  some 
time  or  other  likened  women  to  angels,  but  we  are  not  therefore  supposed  se- 
riously to  ignore  the  fact  that  women  wear  flannel  petticoats,  and  have  their 
faults,  and  are  mortal.  So  of  loyal  professions  in  England  now.  They  are  un- 
derstood to  be  phrases,  like  "  Your  obedient  servant,"  at  the  bottom  of  a  letter. 
They  do  not  suggest  hypocrisy  or  pretence  of  any  kind.  There  is  apparently  no 
more  inconsistency  now  in  a  man's  loyally  drinking  the  health  of  the  Queen, 
*nd  proceeding  immediately  after  (in  private  conversation)  to  abuse  or  ridicule 


QUEEN  VICTORIA  AND  HER  SUBJECTS.  9 

.  icr  and  her  family,  than  there  would  be  in  the  same  man  beginning  with  "  Dear 
Sir,"  a  missive  to  one  whom  he  notoriously  dislikes.  Every  one  who  has  been 
lately  in  London  must  have  heard  an  immense  amount  of  scandal,  or  at  all 
events  of  flippant  joking  at  the  expense  of  the  Queen  herself;  and  of  more  se- 
rious complaint  and  distrust  as  regards  the  Prince  of  Wales.  Yet  the  virtues 
of  the  Queen,  and  the  noble  qualities  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  are  panegyrized 
and  toasted,  and  hurrah'd  at  every  public  dinner  where  Englishmen  gather  to- 
gether. 

The  very  virtues  of  Queen  Victoria  have  contributed  materially  loward  the 
extinction  of  the  old-fashioned  sentiment  of  living,  active  loyalty.  The  English 
people  had  from  the  time  at  least  of  Anne  to  our  own  day  a  succession  of  bad 
princes.  Only  a  race  patient  as  Issachar  could  have  endured  such  a  line  of 
sovereigns  as  George  II.,  George  III.,  and  George  IV.  Then  came  William 
IV.,  who  being  a  little  less  stupidly  obstinate  than  George  III.,  and  not  so 
grossly  corrupt  as  George  IV.,  was  hailed  for  a  while  as  the  Patriot  King  by  a 
people  who  were  only  too  anxious  not  to  lose  all  their  hereditary  and  traditional 
veneration.  Do  what  they  would,  however,  the  English  nation  could  not  get  into 
any  sincere  transports  of  admiration  about  the  Patriot  King ;  and  they  soon 
found  that  any  popular  reform  worth  having  was  to  be  got  rather  in  spite  of  the 
Patriot  King,  than  by  virtue  of  any  wisdom  or  patriotism  in  the  monarch.  Great 
popular  demonstrations  and  tumults,  and  threats  of  marching  on  London  ;  and 
O'Connell  meetings  at  Charing  Cross,  with  significant  allusion  by  the  great  dem- 
agogue to  the  King  who  lost  his  head  at  Whitehall  hard  by ;  the  hanging  out 
of  the  black  flag  at  Manchester,  and  a  general  movement  of  brickbats  every- 
where— these  seem  to  have  been  justly  regarded  as  the  persuasive  influences 
which  converted  a  Sovereign  into  the  Patriot  King  and  a  Reformer.  Loyalty 
did  not  gain  much  by  the  reforms  of  that  reign.  Then  followed  the  young  Vic- 
toria ;  and  enthusiasm  for  a  while  wakened  up  fresh  and  genuine  over  the  ascen- 
sion of  the  comely  and  simple-hearted  girl,  who  was  so  frank  and  winning  ;  who 
ran  down  stairs  in  her  night-dress,  rather  than  keep  her  venerable  councillors 
waiting  when  they  sought  her  out  at  midnight ;  who  openly  acknowledged  her 
true  love  for  her  cousin,  and  offered  him  her  hand ;  who  was  at  once  queenly 
and  maidenly,  innocent  and  fearless. 

But  this  sort  of  thing  did  not  last  very  long.  Prince  Albert  was  never  pop- 
ular. He  was  cold  ;  people  said  he  was  stingy  ;  his  very  virtues,  and  they 
were  genuine,  were  not  such  as  anybody,  except  his  wife  and  family,  warmly  ad- 
mires in  a  man  ;  he  was  indeed  misunderstood,  or  at  all  events  misprized  in  Eng- 
land, up  to  the  close  of  his  life.  Then  the  gates  of  the  convent,  so  to  speak,  closed 
over  the  Queen,  and  royalty  ceased  to  be  an  animating  presence  in  England. 

The  young  men  and  women  of  to-day — persons  who  have  not  passed  the  age 
of  twenty-one — can  hardly  remember  to  have  ever  seen  the  Sovereign.  She  is 
to  them  what  the  Mikado  is  to  his  people.  Seven  years  of  absolute  seclusion 
on  the  part  of  a  monarch  must  in  any  case  be  a  sad  trial  to  personal  loyalty,  at 
least  in  the  royal  capital.  A  considerable  and  an  influential  section  of  Queen 
Victoria's  subjects  in  the  metropolis  have  long  been  very  angry  with  their  Sov- 
ereign. The  tailors,  the  milliners,  the  dressmakers,  the  jewellers,  the  perfum- 
ers, all  the  shopkeepers  of  the  West  End  who  make  profit  out  of  court  dinners 
and  balls  and  presentations,  are  furious  at  the  royal  seclusion  which  they  be- 
lieve has  injured  their  business.  So,  too,  are  the  aristocratic  residents  of  the 
West  End,  who  do  not  care  much  about  a  court  which  no  longer  contributes  to 
their  season's  gayety.  So,  too,  are  all  the  flunkey  class  generally.  Now,  I  ain 


10  QUEEN  VICTORIA  AND  HER  SUBJECTS. 

sure  there  are  no  three  sections  of  the  population  of  London  more  influential  in 
the  spreading  of  scandal  and  the  nursing  of  this  discontent  than  the  shopkeepers, 
the  aristocrats,  and  the  flunkeys  of  the  West  End.  These  are  actively  and  de- 
monstratively dissatisfied  with  the  Queen.  These  it  is  who  spread  dirty  scandals 
about  her,  and  laugh  over  vile  lampoons  and  caricatures  of  which  she  is  the 
object. 

Every  one  knows  that  there  is  a  low,  mean  scandal  afloat  about  the  Queen — 
and  it  is  spread  by  the  clubs,  the  drawing-rooms,  the  shops,  and  the  servants'- 
halls  of  the  West  End.  I  am  convinced  that  not  one  of  those  who  spread  the 
scandal  really  believes  it ;  but  they  like  to  spread  it  because  they  dislike  the 
Queen.  There  can  be  no  doubt,  however,  that  much  dissatisfaction  at  the 
Queen's  long  seclusion  is  felt  by  persons  who  are  incapable  of  harboring  any 
motives  so  mean  or  spreading  any  calumnies  so  unworthy.  Most  of  the  London 
papers  have  always  found  fault  rather  sharply  and  not  over  decently  with  the 
royal  retirement.  Mr.  Ayrton,  representative  of  the  Tower  Hamlets — the  largest 
constituency  in  England^ — openly  expressed  this  sentiment  at  a  public  meeting ; 
.ind  though  his  remarks  were  at  once  replied  to  and  condemned  by  Mr.  Bright, 
they  met  with  a  more  or  less  cordial  response  from  most  of  his  audience. 

There  is  or  was  in  the  House  of  Commons  (the  general  election  has  got 
happily  rid  of  him),  a  foolish  person  named  Reardon,  a  Piccadilly  auctioneer,  who 
became,  by  what  we  call  in  England  "  a  fluke,"  a  member  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. This  person  moved  last  session  a  resolution,  or  something  of  the  kind, 
calling  on  the  Queen  to  abdicate.  The  thing  was  laughed  down — poor  Mr. 
Reardon's  previous  career  had  been  so  absurd  that  anything  coming  from  him 
would  have  been  hooted  ;  and  the  House  of  Commons  is  fiercely  intolerant  of 
"bores"  and  men  with  crotchets.  But  I  have  reason  to  believe  that  Mr.  Rear- 
don's  luckless  project  was  concocted  by  a  delegation  of  London  tradesmen,  and 
had  the  sympathy  of  the  whole  class  ;  and  I  know  that  many  members  of  the 
House  which  hooted  and  laughed  him  down  had  in  private  over  and  over  again 
grumbled  at  the  Queen's  retirement,  and  declared  that  she  ought  to  abdicate. 

"  What  on  earth  does  it  matter,"  I  asked  of  a  member  of  Parliament — one 
of  the  most  accomplished  scholars  and  sharp  logicians  in  the  House — "  What 
on  earth  does  it  matter  whether  or  not  the  Queen  gives  a  few  balls  to  a  few 
thousand  West  End  people  in  the  season  ?  How  can  rational  people  care,  one 
way  or  the  other  ? "  "  My  dear  fellow,"  was  the  answer,  "  /  don't  care  ;  but 
all  that  sort  of  thing  is  her  business,  and  she  is  paid  to  do  it,  and  she  ought  to 
do  it.  If  she  were  a  washerwoman  with  a  family,  she  would  have  to  do  her 
work,  no  matter  what  her  grief."  Now  this  gentleman — who  is  utterly  above 
any  sympathy  with  scandal  or  with  the  lackey-like  grumblings  of  the  West  End 
— did,  undoubtedly,  express  fairly  enough  a  growing  mood  of  the  public  dissat- 
isfaction. 

Beyond  all  this,  however,  is  the  fact  that  people — the  working-class  espe- 
cially— are  beginning  to  ask  whether  we  really  want  a  Sovereign  at  all,  seeing 
that  we  get  on  just  as  well  during  the  eclipse  of  royalty  as  'LI  its  brightest 
meridian  splendor.  This  question  is  being  very  often  put ;  and  it  is  probably 
more  often  thought  over  than  put  into  words.  Now  I  think  nothing  worse  could 
possibly  happen  to  royalty  in  England  than  that  people  should  begin  quietly  to 
ask  whether  there  really  is  any  use  in  it.  If  there  is  a  bad  King  or  Queen,  peo- 
ple can  get  or  look  for,  or  hope  and  pray  for  a  good  one  ;  and  the  abuse  of  the 
throne  will  not  be  accounted  a  sufficient  argument  against  the  use  of  it.  Bui 
bow  will  it  be  when  the  subjects  begin  to  find  that  during  the  reign  of  one  of 


QUEEN  VICTORIA  AND  HER  SUB;ECTS.  11 

the  best  sovereigns  possible  to  have,  they  can  get  on  perfectly  well  although  the 
monarch  is  in  absolute  seclusion  ? 

George  IV.  was  an  argument  against  bad  kings  only — Queen  Victoria  may 
come  to  be  accepted  as  an  illustration  of  the  uselessness  of  the  very  best  kind 
of  Sovereign.  I  think  King  Log  was  much  better  calculated  to  do  harm  to  the 
institution  of  royalty  than  King  Stork,  although  the  frogs  might  have  regretted 
the  placid  reign  of  the  former  when  the  latter  was  gobbling  up  their  best  and 
fattest. 

Decidedly  the  people  of  England  are  learning  of  the  Queen  how  to  do  with 
out  royalty.  A  small  section  of  her  subjects  are  angry  with  her  and  bitter  of 
heart  against  her  ;  a  much  larger  number  find  they  can  do  perfectly  well  without 
her  ;  a  larger  numbe'r  still  have  forgotten  her.  On  a  memorable  occasion  Prince 
Albert  declared  that  constitutional  government  was  on  its  trial  in  England.  The 
phrase,  like  many  that  came  from  the  same  well-meaning  lips,  was  unlucky. 
Constitutional  government  was  not  upon  its  trial  then  ;  but  Monarchy  is  upon  its 
trial  now. 

Do  I  mean  to  say  that  Great  Britain  is  on  the  verge  of  a  revolution  ;  that 
the  dynasty  is  about  to  be  overthrown  ;  that  a  new  Cromwell  is  to  make  his 
appearance  ?  By  no  means.  It  does  not  follow  that  even  if  the  English  people 
wei  e  to  be  convinced  to-morrow  of  the  absolute  uselessness  of  a  throne,  and  a 
sovereignty,  they  would  therefore  proceed  to  establish  a  republic.  No  people 
under  the  sun  are  more  strongly  governed  by  tradition  and  "  the  majesty  of 
custom  "  than  the  English.  Cobden  used  to  say  that  they  had  a  Chinese  ob- 
jection to  change  of  any  kind.  The  Lord  Mayor's  show,  long  threatened,  and 
for  a  while  partially  obscured,  has  come  out  again  in  full  gingerbread.  There  is 
a  functionary  who  appears  every  night  at  the  door  of  the  House  of  Commons 
just  at  the  moment  when  the  sitting  is  formally  declared  to  be  over,  and  bawls 
out  to  the  emptying  benches  the  resonant  question,  "  Who's  for  home  ?  "  I 
believe  the  practice  originated  at  a  time  when  Westminster  was  unpeopled,  and 
midnight  roads  were  dangerous,  and  members  were  glad  to  make  up  parties 
to  travel  home  together  ;  and,  so  a  functionary  was  appointed  to  issue  stento- 
rian appeal  to  all  who  were  thus  willing  to  combine  their  strength  and  journey 
safely  in  company.  The  need  of  such  an  arrangement  has,  I  need  hardly  say, 
passed  away  these  many  generations  ;  but  the  usage  exists.  It  oppresses  no  one 
to  have  the  formal  call  thundered  out ;  the  thing  has  got  to  be  a  regular  per- 
formance ;  it  is  part  of  the  whole  business  and  system ;  nobody  wants  it,  but 
nobody  heeds  it  or  objects  to  it,  and  the  functionary  appears  every  night  of  every 
session  and  shouts  his  invitation  to  companionship  as  regularly  as  if  the  Mo- 
hocks were  in  possession  of  Charing  Cross,  and  Claude  Duval  were  coming  full 
trot  along  Piccadilly. 

Now,  this  may  be  taken  as  a  sort  of  illustration  of  the  manner  in  which  the 
English  people  are  naturally  inclined  to  deal  with  any  institutions  which  are 
merely  useless,  and  have  the  recommendation  of  old  age  and  long  descent.  The 
ordinary  Englishman  to-day  would  find  it  hard  to  bring  up  before  his  mind's 
eye  a  picture  of  an  England  without  a  Sovereign.  If  it  were  made  fully  plain  to 
him,  and  thoroughly  impressed  upon  his  mind  that  he  could  do  just  as  well 
without  a  Sovereign  as  with,  and  even  that  Monarchy  never  could  possibly  be  of 
use  to  him  any  more,  I  think  he  would  endure  it  and  pay  its  cost,  and  drink  its 
health  loyally  for  all  time,  providing  Monarchy  did  nothing  outrageously  wrong  ; 
or  provided — which  is  more  to  my  present  purpose — that  no  other  changes  of  a 
remarkable  nature  occurred  in  the  meantime  to  remove  ancient  landmarks,  tc 


12  QUEEN  VICTORIA  AND  HER  SUBJECTS. 

disturb  the  basis  of  his  old  institutions  and  to  prepare  him  for  a  new  order  of 
things.  This  is  indeed  the  point  I  wish  to  discuss  just  now.  I  have  explained 
what  I  believe  to  be  the  depth  and  strength  and  meaning  of  the  average  Eng- 
lishman's loyal  feelings  to  his  Sovereign  at  the  present  moment  I  should  like 
to  consider  next  how  that  feeling  will,  in  all  probability,  be  affected  by  the 
changes  in  the  English  political  system,-  which  seem  inevitable,  and  by  the  ac- 
cession, or  expected  accession,  of  a  new  Sovereign  to  the  throne. 

England  has,  just  now,  something  very  nearly  approaching  to  manhood  suf- 
frage ;  and  to  manhood  suffrage  it  will  probably  come  before  long.  The  ballot 
will,  doubtless,  be  introduced.  The  Irish  Church  is  as  good  as  dead.  I  cannot 
doubt  that  the  English  State  Church  will,  ultimately,  and  before  very  long,  suc- 
cumb to  the  same  fate.  Not  that  this  logically  or  politically  follows  as  a  matter 
of  necessity  ;  and  nothing  could  be  more  unwise  in  the  interest  of  their  own 
cause  than  the  persistency  with  which  the  Tories  keep  insisting  that  the  doom 
of  the  one  is  involved  in  the  doom  of  the  other.  The  Irish  Church  is  the  foreign 
church  of  a  miserably  small  minority ;  the  English  Establishment  is  the  Church 
of  the  majority,  and  is  an  institution  belonging  to  the  soil.  The  very  principle 
which  maintains  the  English  Church  ought  of  right  to  condemn  the  Irish 
Church.  But  it  is  the  fact  that  an  agitation  more  influential  than  it  seemed  to 
the  careless  spectator,  has  long  been  going  on  in  England  for  the  abolition  of 
the  State  Church  system  altogether  ;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  fate  of 
the  Irish  Establishment  will  lend  immense  courage  and  force  to  that  agitation. 
Revolutionary  movements  are  always  contagious  in  their  nature,  and  the  move- 
ment against  the  Irish  Church  is  in  the  strictest  sense  revolutionary.  The  Dutch 
or  the  Scotch  would  have  carried  such  a  movement  to  triumph  across  rivers  of 
blood  if  it  were  needful ;  and  no  man  of  spirit  could  say  that  the  end  would  not 
be  worth  the  cost.  I  assume,  then,  that  the  overthrow  of  the  Irish  Church  will 
inflame  to  iconoclastic  fervor  the  movement  of  the  English  Dissenters  against 
all  Church  establishments.  I  do  not  stop  just  now  to  inquire  whether  the 
movement  is  likely  to  be  successful  or  how  long  it  may  take  to  accomplish  the 
object.  To  me,  it  seems  beyond  doubt  that  it  must  succeed  ;  but  I  do  not  care 
to  assume  even  that  for  the  purpose  of  my  present  argument.  I  only  ask  my 
readers  to  consider  the  condition  of  things  which  will  exist  in  England  when  a 
movement  resting  on  a  suffrage  which  is  almost  universal,  a  movement  which 
vill  have  already  overthrown  one  State  Church  within  Great  Britain,  proceeds 
openly  and  e'xultingly  to  attack  the  English  Church  itself,  within  its  own  do- 
minions. I  ask  whether  it  is  likely  that  the  institution  which  is  supposed  to  be 
bound  up  inseparably  with  that  Church,  the  Monarchy  which  is  based  upon, 
and  exists  by  virtue  of  religious  ascendency,  is  likely  to  escape  all  question 
during  such  a  struggle,  and  after  it  ?  The  State  Church  and  the  Aristocracy,  if 
they  cannot  always  be  called  bulwarks  of  the  throne,  are  yet  so  completely  as- 
sociated with  it  in  the  public  mind  that  it  is  hard  even  to  think  of  the  one  with- 
out the  others,  and  yet  harder  to  think  of  the  one  as  existing  serene  and  unin- 
jured after  the  decay  or  demolition  of  the  others. 

Now,  the  Aristocracy  have,  as  Mr.  Bright  put  it  so  truly  and  so  effectively 
the  other  day,  already  capitulated.  They  have  given  up  all  notion  of  any  longer 
making  the  laws  of  the  country  in  the  interest  of  their  own  class.  One  of  the 
first  things  the  P ^formed  Parliament  will  do,  when  it  has  breathing-time  to 
think  about  such  matters,  will  be  to  abolish  the  purchase  system  in  the  army, 
and  throw  open  promotion  to  merit,  without  reference  to  class.  The  diplomatic 
service,  that  other  greo  Uronghold  of  the  Aristocracy,  will  be  thoroughly  reor- 


QUEEN  VICTORIA  AND  HER  SUBJECTS.  13 

ganized  and  made  a  real,  useful  department,  doing  solid  work,  and  open  to  talent 
of  whatever  caste  ;  or  it  will  be  abolished  altogether.  Something  will  have  to 
be  done  with  the  House  of  Lords.  It,  too,  must  be  made  a  reality,  or  dis- 
missed into  the  land  of  shadows  and  the  past.  Efforts  at  reforming  it,  while  it 
stands  on  its  present  basis,  are  futile.  Its  existence  is,  in  its  present  form,  the 
one  great  objection  to  it. 

The  good-natured,  officious  Lord  Shaftesbury  went  to  work,  a  few  months 
ago,  to  prepare  a  scheme  of  reform  for  the  House  of  Lords,  in  order  to  antici- 
pate and  conciliate  the  popular  movement  which  he  expected.  He  could  think 
of  nothing  better  than  a  recommendation  that  the  House  should  meet  an  hour 
earlier  every  evening,  in  order,  by  throwing  more  time  on  their  hands,  to  induce 
the  younger  Peers  to  get  up  debates  and  take  part  in  them.  This,  however,  is 
not  precisely  the  kind  of  reform  the  country  will  ask  for  when  it  has  leisure  to 
turn  its  attention  to  the  subject.  It  will  ask  for  some  reorganization  which 
shall  either  abolish  or  reduce  to  a  comparative  nothing  the  hereditary  legislating 
principle  on  which  the  House  of  Lords  now  rests.  A  set  of  law-makers  or  law- 
marrers  intrusted  with  power  only  because  they  are  born  to  titles,  is  an  absurd 
anomaly,  which  never  could  exist  in  company  with  popular  suffrage.  "  Heredi- 
tary law-makers  !  "  exclaimed  Franklin.  "You  might  as  well  talk  of  hereditary 
mathematicians  !  "  Franklin  expressed  exactly  what  the  feeling  of  the  common 
sense  of  England  is  likely  to  be  when  the  question  comes  to  be  raised.  I  ex- 
pect then,  not  that  the  House  of  Lords  will  be  abolished,  but  that  the  rule  of 
the  hereditary  principle  will  be  brought  to  an  end — that  the  Aristocracy  there, 
too,  will  have  to  capitulate. 

Now,  I  doubt  whether  an  American  reader  can  have  any  accurate  idea,  un- 
less he  has  specially  studied  the  matter  and  watched  its  practical  operation  in 
England,  of  the  manner  in  which  the  influence  of  the  Peers  makes  itself  felt 
through  the  political  life  of  Great  Britain.  Americans  often  have  some  kind  of 
notion  that  the  Aristocracy  govern  the  country  directly  and  despotically,  with 
the  high  hand  of  imperious  feudalism.  There  is  nothing  of  the  kind  in  reality. 
The  House  of  Lords  is,  as  a  piece  of  political  machinery,  almost  inoperative — 
as  nearly  as  possible  harmless.  No  English  Peer,  Lord  Derby  alone  excepted, 
has  anything  like  the  political  authority  and  direct  influence  of  Mr.  Gladstone, 
Mr.  Disraeli,  or  Mr.  Bright.  There  are  very  few  Peers,  indeed,  about  whose  po- 
litical utterances  anybody  in  the  country  cares  three  straws.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  traditional  prestige  of  the  Peers,  the  tacit,  time-honored,  generally- 
conceded  doctrine  that  a  Peer  has  first  right  to  everything — the  mediaeval  su- 
perstition tolerated  largely  in  our  own  time,  which  allows  a  sort  of  divinity  to 
hedge  a  Peer — all  this  has  an  indirect,  immense,  pervading,  almost  universal 
influence  in  the  practical  working  of  English  politics.  The  Peers  have,  in  fact, 
a  political  droit  du  seigneur  in  England.  They  have  first  taste  of  every  privi- 
lege, first  choice  of  every  appointment.  Political  office  is  their  pasture,  where 
they  are  privileged  to  feed  at  will.  There  does  not  now  exist  a  man  in  England 
likely  to  receive  high  office,  who  would  be  bold  enough  to  suggest  the  forming 
of  a  Cabinet  without  Peers  in  it,  even  though  there  were  no  Peers  to  be  had 
who  possessed  the  slightest  qualification  for  any  ministerial  position.  The 
Peers  must  have  a  certain  number  of  places,  because  they  are  P6ers.  The 
House  of  Commons  swarms  with  the  sons  and  nephews  of  Peers.  The  house- 
hold appointments,  the  ministerial  offices,  the  good  places  in  the  army  ana  the 
church  are  theirs  when  they  choose — and  they  generally  do  choose — to  have  them. 
The  son  of  a  Peer,  if  in  the  House  of  Commons,  may  be  raised  at  one  step 


14  QUEEN  VICTORIA  AND  HER  SUBJECTS. 

from  his  place  in  the  back  benches  to  a  seat  in  the  Cabinet,  simply  because  of 
his  rank.  When  Earl  Russell,  two  or  three  years  ago,  raised  Mr.  Goschen,  one 
of  the  represent  .lives  of  the  city  of  London  and  a  partner  in  a  great  London 
banking-house,  to  a  place  in  the  Cabinet,  the  whole  country  wondered  :  a  very 
few,  who  were  not  frightened  out  of  their  propriety,  admired  ;  some  thought  the 
world  must  be  coming  to  an  end.  But  when  the  Marquis  of  Hartin  ton  wa^ 
suddenly  picked  out  of  West  End  dissipation  and  made  War  Secretary,  nobody 
expressed  the  least  wonder,  for  he  was  the  heir  of  the  House  of  Devonshire. 
Indeed,  it  was  perfectly  notorious  that  the  young  Marquis  was  presented  to  of- 
fice, in  the  first  instance,  because  it  was  hoped  by  his  friends  .hat  official  duties 
might  wean  him  from  the  follies  and  frivolities  of  a  more  than  ordinarily  heed- 
less youth.  Sir  Robert  Peel  the  present,  the  magni  nominis  itmbra,  is  not,  of 
course,  in  the  strict  sense,  an  aristocrat  ;  but  he  is  mixed  up  with  aristocrats, 
and  is  the  son  of  a  Peer-maker,  and  may  be  regarded  as  claiming  and  having 
the  privileges  of  the  class.  Sir  Robert  Peel  wa-.  presented  with  the  First  Stc- 
letaryship  as  something  to  play  with,  because  his  aristocratic  friends,  the  Lidies 
esp  cially,  thought  he  would  be  more  likely  to  sow  his  wild  oats  if  he  were  be- 
guiled by  the  semblance  of  official  business.  A  commoner  must,  in  fact,  be 
supposed  to  have  some  qualification  for  office  before  he  is  invited  to  fill  a  min- 
isterial place.  No  qualification  is  believed  necessary  for  the  near  relative  or 
connection  of  a  Peer.  Even  in  the  most  favorable  examples  of  Peers  who  are 
regular  occupants  of  office,  no  special  fitness  is  assumed  or  pretended.  No  one 
supposes  or  says  that  Lord  Clarendon,  or  Lord  Granville,  or  Lord  Malmes- 
bury  has  any  particular  qualification  which  entitles  him,  above  all  other  men,  to 
this  or  that  ministerial  place.  Yet  it  must  be  a  man  of  bold  imagination  in- 
deed, who  could  now  conceive  the  possibility  of  a  British  Cabinet  without  one 
of  these  noblemen  having  a  place  in  it. 

All  this  comes,  as  I  have  said,  out  of  a  lingering  superstition — the  faith  in 
the  divine  right  of  Peers.  Now,  a  reform  in  the  constitution  of  the  Upper 
House,  which  should  purge  it  of  the  hereditary  principle,  would  be-the  first  great 
blow  to  this  superstition.  Julius  Caesar,  in  one  of  his  voyages  of  conquest,  was 
much  perplexed  by  the  priests,  who  insisted  that  he  had  better  go  back  bccausa 
the  sacred  chickens  would  not  eat.  At  last  he  thought  the  time  had  come  to 
prove  his  independence  of  the  sacred  chickens,  "If  they  will  not  eat,"  he  said, 
"  then  let  them  drink  " — and  he  flung  the  consecrated  fowls  int  >  the  sea  ;  and 
the  expedition  went  on  triumphantly,  and  the  Roman  soldiers  learn,  d  that  they 
could  do  without  the  sacred  chickens.  I  think  a  somewhat  similar  sensation 
will  come  over  all  classes  of  the  English  people  when  they  find  that  the  heredi- 
tary right  to  make  laws  is  taken  from  the  English  Peerage.  I  c.o  not  doubt 
that  the  whole  fabric  of  superstition  wi  1  presently  collapse,  and  that  the  priv- 
ilege of  the  Peer  will  cease  to  be  anything  more  than  that  degree  of  superior  in- 
fluence which  wealth  and  social  rank  can  generally  command,  even  in  the  most 
democratic  communities.  The  law  which  gives  impulse  and  support  to  the  cus- 
tom of  primogeniture  is  certain  to  go,  and  with  it  another  prop  of  the  mediaeva' 
superstition.  The  Peerage  capitulates,  in  fact — no  n  ore  expressive  word  can 
l.e  found  to  describe  the  situation. 

Now,  in  all  this,  I  h  ve  been  foreshadowing  no  scheme  of  wild,  vague,  far- 
distant  reform.  I  appeal  to  an.  one,  Liberal  or  Tory,  who  is  practically  ac- 
quainted with  English  politics,  to  say  whether  these  are  not  changes  he  confi- 
dently or  timidly  looks  to  see  accomplished  before  long  in  England.  I  have  not 
spoken  of  any  reform  which  is  not  part  of  the  actual  accepted  programme  of  the 


QUEEN  VICTORIA  AND  HER  SUBJECTS.  1-3 

Radical  party.  To  the  reform  of  the  House  of  Lords,  of  the  military  and  diplo- 
matic service  ;  to  abolition  of  the  law  of  primogeniture,  the  whole  body  of  the 
Liberals  stands  pledged  ;  and  Mr.  Bright  very  recently  renewed  the  pledges  in 
a  manner  and  with  an  emphasis  which  showed  that  change  of  circumstances 
has  made  no  change  in  his  opinions,  brought  no  faltering  in  his  resolution.  The 
abolition  of  the  English  Church  is  not,  indeed,  thus  openly  sought  by  so  power- 
ful a  party ;  but  it  is  ostentatiously  aimed  at  by  that  solid,  compact,  pertinacious 
body  of  Dissenters  who,  after  so  long  a  struggle,  succeeded  at  last  in  getting 
rid  of  Church  rates  ;  and  the  movement  will  go  on  with  a  rush  after  the  fall  of 
the  Irish  establishment.  Here  then  we  have,  in  the  not  distant  future,  a  pros- 
pect of  an  England  without  a  privileged  Aristocracy,  and  with  the  State  Church 
principle  called  into  final  question.  I  return  to  my  first  consideration — the  con- 
sideration which  is  the  subject  of  this  paper — how  will  this  affect  the  great  aris- 
tocratic, feudal  and  hierarchical  institution  of  England,  the  Throne  of  the 
Monarch  ? 

The  Throne  then  will  stand  naked  and  alone,  stripped  of  its  old-time  and 
traditional  surroundings  and  associations.  It  cannot  be  like  that  of  France,  the 
throne  of  a  Caesar,  a  despotic  institution  claiming  to  exercise  its  despotism  over 
the  people  by  virtue  of  the  will  and  delegated  power  of  the  people.  The  Eng- 
lish Crown  never  can  be  an  active  governing  power.  It  will  be  the  last  idol  in  the 
invaded  sanctuary.  It  will  stand  alone,  among  the  pedestals  from  which  popu- 
lar reform  has  swept  the  embodied  superstitions  which  were  its  long  compan- 
ions. It  must  live,  if  at  all,  on  the  old  affection  or  the  toleration  which  springs 
out  of  custom  and  habit.  This  affection,  or  at  least  this  toleration,  may  always 
be  looked  upon  as  a  powerful  influence  in  England.  One  can  hardly  imagine, 
for  instance,  anything  occurring  in  our  day  to  dethrone  the  Queen.  However 
one  class  may  grumble  and  another  class  may  gibe,  the  force  of  habit  and  old 
affection  would,  in  this  instance,  prove  omnipotent.  But,  suppose  the  Prince 
of  Wales  should  turn  out  an  unpopular  and  ill-conditioned  ruler  ?  Suppose  he 
should  prove  to  be  a  man  of  low  tastes,  of  vulgar  and  spendthrift  habits,  a  mala- 
droit and  intermeddling  king?  He  is  not  very  popular  in  England,  even  now, 
and  he  is  either  one  of  the  most  unjustly  entreated  men  living,  or  he  has  defects 
which  even  the  excuse  of  youth  can  scarcely  gloss  over. 

An  illustrated  weekly  paper  in  London  forced  itself  lately  into  a  sudden 
notoriety  by  publishing  a  finely-drawn  cartoon,  in  which  the  Prince  of  Wales, 
dressed  as  Hamlet,  was  represented  as  breaking  away  from  the  restraining  arms 
of  John  Bull  as  Horatio,  and  public  opinion  as  Marcellus,  and  rushing  after  a 
ghost  which  bore  the  form  and  features  of  George  IV.,  while  underneath  were 
inscribed  the  words,  "  Lead  on  ;  I'll  follow  thee  !  "  This  was  a  bold  and  bitter 
lampoon ;  I  am  far  from  saying  that  it  was  not  unjust,  but  I  believe  it  can 
hardly  be  doubted  that  the  Prince  of  Wales  has,  as  yet,  shown  little  inclination 
to  imitate  the  example  or  cultivate  the  tastes  of  his  pure-minded  and  intellectual 
father.  Now  suppose,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that  the  Prince  of  Wales 
should  turn  out  a  George  IV.,  or  suppose,  and  which  would  be  far  worse  from  a 
national  point  of  view,  he  or  his  son  should  turn  out  a  George  III.  And  sup- 
pose further  that,  about  the  same  time  any  great  crisis  should  arise  in  England 
— suppose  the  country  entangled  in  a  great  foreign  war,  or  disturbed  by  some 
momentous  domestic  agitation — can  any  one  doubt  that  the  Crown,  in  its  then 
isolated  condition,  would  be  really  in  danger? 

We  must  remember,  when  the  strength  of  English  institutions  is  boasted, 
that  they  have  not,  since  1815,  stood  any  strain  which  could  fairly  be  called  criti- 


16  QUEEN  VICTORIA  AND  HER  SUBJECTS. 

cal.  England  has  never  had  her  national  strength,  her  political  position,  or  even 
h&r  prestige  seriously  imperilled  since  that  time.  Even  the  Indian  war  could  not 
be  called  a  great  supreme  trial,  such  as  other  nations  have  lately  had  to  bear. 
No  one,  even  for  a  moment,  could  have  doubted  how  that  struggle  would  end.  It 
was  bitter,  it  was  bloody;  but  the  life  of  the  nation  was  not  staked  upon  it, 
even  had  its  issue  been  uncertain  ;  and  its  issue  never  was  uncertain.  It  would 
lie  superfluous  to  say  that  England  has  passed  through  no  ordeal  like  that  to 
which  the  United  States  were  lately  subjected.  She  has  not  even  had  to  con- 
front anything  like  the  crisis  which  Prussia  voluntarily  invited,  which  Austria 
had  to  meet,  in  1866.  It  will  be  time  to  consider  English  feudal  institutions, 
or  what  may  remain  of  them,  safe  and  firmly-rooted,  when  they  have  stood  the 
worst  result  of  such  a  crisis  as  that,  and  not  been  shaken  down. 

What  I  contend  is  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  present  condition  of  the  Eng- 
lish public  mind,  and  nothing  in  the  prospect  of  the  immediate  future  to  war- 
rant the  almost  universal  assumption  that  the  throne  of  England  is  founded  on 
a  rock.  The  stupidity  of  loyalty,  the  devotion  as  of  the  spaniel  to  his  master, 
of  the  idolator  to  his  god,  is  gone.  I  doubt  if  there  exists  one  man  in  England 
who  feels  the  sentiment  of  loyalty  as  his  grandfather  would  have  felt  it.  The 
mass  of  the  people  have  learned  satisfactorily  that  a  sovereign  is  not  a  part  of 
the  necessary  machinery  of  the  government.  The  great  problem  which  the 
Duke  of  Wellington  used  to  present  for  solution — "  How  is  the  Queen's  Gov- 
ernment to  be  carried  on  ? "  has  been  solved  in  one  and  an  unexpected  sense. 
It  can  be  carried  on  without  a  queen.  Here  then  we  have  the  institution  pro- 
ving itself  superfluous,  and  falling  into  public  indifference  at  the  very  same  mo- 
ment that  some  other  institutions  which  seemed  always  involved  with  it  as  its 
natural  and  necessary  companions,  are  about  to  be  broken  to  pieces  and  thrown 
away.  He  must,  indeed,  be  full  of  a  verily  transcendental  faith  in  the  destinies 
and  divinity  of  royalty  who  does  not  admit  that  at  least  there  is  a  time  of  or- 
deal awaiting  it  in  England,  such  as  it  has  not  encountered  before  during  this 
century. 

To  me  it  seems  that  the  royal  principle  in  England  is  threatened,  not  with 
sudden  and  violent  extinction,  but  with  death  by  decay.  I  do  not  expect  any 
change  of  any  kind  to-morrow  or  the  day  after,  or  even  the  week  after  next.  I 
do  not  care  to  dogmatize,  or  predict,  or  make  guesses  of  any  kind.  I  quite  agree 
with  my  friend  Professor  Thorold  Rogers,  that  an  uninspired  prophet  is  a  fool. 
But  I  contend  that  as  the  evident  signs  of  the  times  now  show  themselves,  the 
monarchical  principle  in  England  does  seem  to  be  decaying ;  that  the  national 
faith  which  bore  it  up  is  sorely  shaken  and  almost  gone,  and  that  some  of  the 
political  props  which  most  nearly  supported  it  are  already  being  cut  away. 
There  may,  indeed,  be  some  hidden  virtue  in  the  principle,  which  shall  devel- 
ope  itself  unexpectedly  in  the  hour  of  danger,  and  give  to  the  institution  that 
seemed  moribund  a  new  and  splendid  vitality.  Such  a  phenomenon  has  been 
manifested  in  the  case  of  more  than  one  institution  that  seemed  on  the  verge  of 
ruin — it  may  be  the  fortunate  destiny  of  British  royalty.  But  unless  in  the  sud- 
den and  timely  development  of  some  such  occult  and  unlooked-for  virtue,  I  do 
not  see  what  is  to  preserve  the  monarchical  principle  in  England  through  the 
trials  of  the  future. 

Let  it  be  remembered,  too,  that  the  one  great  plea  hitherto  always  made  in 
England  for  monarchy,  is  that  it  alone  will  work  on  a  large  scale.  "  We  ad- 
mit," it  was  said,  "  that  your  republican  theory  looks  better  and  admits  of  more 
logical  argument  in  its  favor.  But  we  are  practical  men,  and  we  find  that  oui 


QUEEN  VICTORIA  AND  HER  SUBJECTS.  17 

system,  with  all  its  theoretical  disadvantages,  will  work  and  stand  a  strain  ;  and 
your  republican  theory,  with  all  its  apparent  advantages  in  logic,  is  not  suited 
for  this  rough  world.  Our  machinery  will  stand  the  hardest  trial ;  yours  never 
did  and  never  will.  Don't  tell  us  about  Switzerland.  Switzerland  is  a  little 
country.  Kept  out  of  the  stress  and  danger  of  European  commotions,  and  pro- 
tected by  a  guarantee  of  the  great  powers,  any  constitution  ought  to  work  under 
such  advantages.  But  a  great  independent  republic  never  did  last ;  never  did 
stand  a  sudden  strain,  and  never  will."  So  people  thought  and  argued  in  Eng- 
land— even  very  intelligent  people,  until  'at  last  it  became  one  of  the  British 
Philistine's  articles  of  faith,  that  the  republican  principle  never  will  work  on  a 
large  scale.  When  Sir  John  Ramsden  declared  in  the  House  of  Commons  at 
the  beginning  of  the  American  civil  war,  that  the  republican  bubble  had  burst, 
and  all  Philistinism  in  Britain  applauded  the  declaration,  the  plaudits  were 
given  not  so  much  because  of  any  settled  dislike  Philistinism  had  to  the  United 
States,  as  because  Philistinism  beheld  what  it  believed  to  be  a  providential  tes- 
timony to  its  own  wisdom  and  foresight.  Since  then  Philistinism  has  found 
that  after  all  republicanism  is  able  to  bear  a  strain  as  great  as  monarchy  has 
ever  yet  borne,  and  can  come  out  of  the  trial  unharmed  and  victorious. 

The  lesson  has  sunk  deeply.  The  mind  of  something  better  than  Philistin- 
ism has  learned  that  republics  can  be  made  to  work  on  a  large  scale.  I  believe 
Mr.  Gladstone  is  one  of  the  eminent  Englishmen  who  now  openly  admit  that 
they  have  learned  from  the  American  war  something  which  they  did  not  know 
before,  of  the  cohesiveness  and  durability  of  the  republican  system.  Up  to  the 
time  of  that  war  in  fact,  most  Englishmen,  when  they  talked  of  republican  prin- 
ciples, thought  only  of  French  republicanism,  and  honestly  regarded  such  a  sys- 
tem as  a  brilliant  empty  bubble,  doomed  to  soar  a  little,  and  float,  and  dazzle, 
and  then  to  burst. 

That  idea,  it  is  quite  safe  to  say,  no  longer  exists  in  the  English  mind.  The 
fundamental,  radical  objection  to  republicanism — the  objection  which,  partly  out 
of  mere  reaction  and  partly  for  more  substantial  reasons,  followed  the  brief  and 
romantic  enthusiasm  of  the  days  of  Fox — is  gone.  The  practical  Englishman 
admits  that  a  republic  is  practicable.  Only  those  who  know  England  can  know 
what  a  change  in  public  opinion  this  is.  It  is,  in  fact,  something  like  a  revolu- 
tion. I  think  the  most  devoted  monarchist  will  hardly  deny  that  if  some  extra- 
ordinary combination  of  chances  (after  all,  even  the  British  Throne  is  but  a  hu- 
man institution)  were  to  disturb  the  succession  of  the  house  ot  Brunswick,  Eng- 
lishmen would  be  more  likely  to  try  the  republican  system  than  to  hunt  about 
for  a  new  royal  family,  or  endeavor  to  invent  a  new  scheme  of  monarch v. 
Here,  then,  I  leave  the  subject.  Take  all  this  into  account,  in  considering  the 
probabilities  of  the  future,  and  then  say  whether,  even  in  the  case  of  England, 
it  is  quite  certain  that  Byron's  prediction  is  only  the  dream  of  a  cynical  poet, 
destined  never  to  be  fulfilled  among  human  realities. 


THE  REAL  LOUIS   NAPOLEON. 

T  T  OW  will  it  be  with  him,"  said  Richard  Cobden  to  a  friend,  one  night 
X  JL  as  they  spoke  of  a  great  and  successful  adventurer  whom  the 
friend  was  striving  to  defend — "how  will  it  be  with  him  when  life  becomes  all 
retrospect?"  The  adventurer  they  spoke  of  was  not  Louis  Napoleon;  but  the 
inquiry  might  well  apply  just  now  to  the  Emperor  of  the  French.  Life  has 
reached  that  point  with  him  when  little  more  than  retrospect  can  be  left.  In  the 
natural  course  of  events,  there  can  be  no  great  triumphs  for  Louis  Napoleon  still 
to  achieve.  Great  blunders  are  possible,  though  hardly  probable  ;  but  the  great- 
est of  blunders  would  scarcely  efface  the  memory  of  the  substantial  triumphs. 
''  Not  heaven  itself,"  exclaimed  an  ambitious  and  profane  statesman,  "can  undo 
the  fact  that  I  have  been  three  times  Prime  Minister."  Well,  the  Fates — 
let  them  do  their  best — can  hardly  undo  the  fact  that  the  despised  outcast 
of  Constance,  and  Augsburg,  and  London,  and  New  York,  whom  Lord 
Palmerston  excused  himself  to  Guizot  for  tolerating,  on  the  ground  that 
really  nobody  minded  the  dull,  harmless  poor  fellow ;  the  Fates  cannot  undo 
the  fact  that  this  man  has  elected  himself  Emperor  of  the  French,  has  de- 
feated the  Russians  and  the  Austrians,  and  made  a  friend  and  ally  of  England. 

So  much  of  the  past,  then,  is  secure ;  but  there  are  hardly  any  triumphs  to 
be  won  in  the  future.  If  one  may  venture  to  predict  anything,  he  may 
venture  to  predict  that  the  Emperor  of  the  French  will  not  live  to  be  a  very 
old  man.  He  has  already  led  many  lives — fast,  hard,  exhausting  lives,  "that 
murder  the  youth  in  a  man  ere  ever  his  heart  has  its  will."  Exile,  conspiracy, 
imprisonment,  hard  thinking,  hard  working,  wild  and  reckless  dissipation,  pro- 
longed to  the  very  outer  verge  of  middle  life,  the  brain,  the  nerves,  the  muscles, 
the  whole  physical  and  mental  constitution  always  strained  to  the  utmost — these 
are  not  the  ways  that  secure  a  long  life.  Louis  Napoleon  is  already  an  "  abge- 
lebter  mann  " — an  outworn,  used-up,  played-out  man.  The  friends  and  familiars 
with  whom  he  started  in  life  are  nearly  all  gone.  Long  since  laid  in  earth  is  the 
stout  form  of  the  wild  Marquis  of  Waterford,  who  was  a  wonder  to  our  fathers 
(his  successor  to  the  title  ran  away  with  somebody's  wife  the  other  day ;  and  I 
thought  Time  had  turned  back  by  thirty  years  when  I  read  of  the  escapade, 
with  the  name,  once  so  famous,  of  the  principal  performer),  and  who  rode  by 
Louis  Napoleon's  side  at  the  celebrated,  forgotten  Eglintoun  Tournament,  and 
was,  like  Louis  Napoleon,  one  of  the  Knights  Challengers  in  that  piece  of  splen- 
did foolery.  Dead,  lang  syne,  is  Eglintoun  himself,  the  chivalrous  Earl  of  the 
generous  instincts  and  the  florid,  rotund  eloquence,  reminding  one  of  Bulwer 
Lytton  diluted.  I  do  not  know  whether  the  Queen  of  Beauty  of  that  grand 
joust  is  yet  living  and  looking  on  the  earth  ;  but  if  she  be,  she  must  be  an  em- 
bodied sermon  on  the  perishableness  of  earthly  charms.  De  Morny  is  dead, 
the  devoted  half-brother,  son  of  Louis  Napoleon's  mother,  the  chaste  Hortense, 
and  the  Count  de  Flahault — De  Morny,  the  brilliant,  genial,  witty,  reckless  gam- 
bler in  politics  and  finance,  the  man  than  whom  nobody  ever,  perhaps,  was  more 
faithful  to  friendship  and  false  to  morality,  more  good-natured  and  unprincipled. 
I  have  seen  tears  in  men's  eyes  when  De  Morny  died — in  the  eyes  of  men  who 
owned  all  the  time,  smiling  through  their  tears  like  Andromache,  that  the  lost 
patron  and  friend  was  the  most  consummate  of  roiii's  and  blacklegs.  Walewski 
is  dead — Walewski  of  romantic  origin,  born  of  the  sudden  episode  of  love 


THE  REAL  LOUIS  NAPOLEON.  19 

between  the  great  Napoleon  and  the  Polish  lady — Walewski,  who,  like 
Prince  Napoleon-Jerome,  carried  his  pedigree  stamped  upon  his  face — Wa- 
lewski, the  lover  of  Rachel,  and,  to  do  him  justice,  the  steady  friend  of  Po- 
land. Old  Mocquard  is  gone,  the  faithful  scribe  and  confidant :  he  is  dead,  and 
the  dramas  he  would  persist  in  writing  are  dead  with  him,  nay,  died  even  before 
him.  I  do  not  know  whether  the  faithful,  devoted  woman  who  worked  for  Louis 
Napoleon,  and  believed  in  him  when  nobody  else  did  ;  the  woman  to  whose  5n- 
spirings,  exertions,  and  ready  money  he  owes,  in  great  measure,  the  fact  that  he 
is  now  Emperor  of  the  French — I  do  not  know  whether  this  woman  is  alive  or 
dead.  I  think  she  is  dead.  Anyhow,  I  suppose  the  dignity  of  history,  as  the 
phrase  is,  can  hardly  take  account  of  her.  She  helped  to  make  an  Emperor,  and 
the  Emperor,  in  return,  made  her  a  Countess  ;  but  then  he  had  to  marry — and  so 
we  take  leave  of  the  woman  who  made  the  Emperor,  and  do  our  homage  to  the 
woman  who  married  him.  All  those  are  gone  ;  and  St.  Arnaud,  of  the  stormy 
youth,  and  Pelissier,  the  bland,  sweet-tempered  chevalier,  who,  getting  into  a 
dispute  (on  his  way  to  be  governor  of  Algeria)  with  the  principal  official  of  a 
Spanish  port,  invited  that  dignitary  to-  salute  a  portion  of  the  Pelissier  person 
which  assuredly  the  foes  of  France  were  never  allowed  to  see — all  these  are  gone, 
and  many  more,  and  only  a  very  few,  fast  fading,  of  the  old  friends  and  followers 
remain.  Life  to  Louis  Napoleon  must  now,  indeed,  be  nearly  all  retrospect. 
His  career,  his  Imperial  reign  may  be  judged  even  now  as  fairly  and  securely  as 
as  if  his  body  had  just  been  laid  beside  that  of  his  uncle,  under  the  dome  of  the 
Invalides. 

Recent  events  seem  specially  to  invite  and  authorize  that  judgment.  Within 
the  past  twelve  months,  the  genuine  character  of  Louis  Napoleon  has  displayed 
itself,  strikingly,  nakedly,  in  his  policy.  He  has  tried,  in  succession,  mild  lib- 
eralism, severe  despotism,  reactionary  conservatism,  antique  Caesarism,  and 
then,  in  an  apologetic,  contrite  sort  of  way,  a  liberalism  of  a  rather  pronounced 
character.  Every  time  that  he  tried  any  new  policy  he  was  secretly  intriguing 
with  some  other,  and  making  ready  for  the  possible  necessity  of  having  to  aban- 
don the  former  and  take  up  with  the  latter.  He  was  like  the  lady  in  "  Le  Diable 
Boiteux,"  who,  while  openly  coquetting  with  the  young  lover,  slily  gives  her 
hand  behind  her  back  to  the  old  admirer.  So  far  as  the  public  could  judge, 
Louis  Napoleon  has,  for  many  months  back,  been  absolutely  without  any  settled 
policy  whatever.  He  has  been  waiting  for  a  wind.  Such  a  course  is  probably 
the  safest  a  man  in  his  position  can  take  ;  but  one  who,  at  a  great  crisis,  cannot 
originate  and  initiate  a  policy,  will  not  be  remembered  among  the  grand  rulers 
of  the  world.  I  do  not  remember  any  greater  evidence  given  in  our  time  of  ab- 
solute incapacity  to  seize  a  plan  of  action  and  decide  upon  it,  than  was  shown  by 
the  Emperor  of  the  French  during  the  crisis  of  June  and  July.  So  feeble,  so 
vague,  halting,  vacillating  was  the  whole  course  of  the  government,  that  many 
who  detest  Louis  Napoleon,  but  make  it  an  article  of  faith  that  he  is  a  sort  of 
all-seeing,  omnipotent  spirit  of  darkness,  were  forced  to  adopt  a  theory  that  the 
riots  in  Paris  and  the  provinces  were  deliberately  got  up  by  the  police  agents  of 
the  Empire,  for  the  purpose  of  frightening  the  bourgeois  class  out  of  any  possi- 
ble hankering  after  democracy.  No  doubt  this  idea  was  widely  spread  and 
eagerly  accepted  in  Paris  ;  and  there  were  many  circumstances  which  seemed  to 
justify  it.  But  I  do  not  believe  in  any  such  Imperial  stage-play.  I  fancy  the 
riots  surprised  the  Government,  first,  by  their  sudden  outburst,  and  next,  by  their 
sudden  collapse.  Probably  the  Imperial  authorities  were  very  glad  when  the 
disturbances  began.  They  gave  an  excuse  for  harsh  conduct,  and  they  seemed, 


20  THE  REAL  LOUIS  NAPOLEON. 

for  the  time,  to  put  the  Government  in  the  right.  They  restored  Louis  Napoleon 
at  that  moment,  in  the  eyes  of  timid  people,  to  that  position,  as  a  supreme  main- 
tainer  of  order,  which  for  some  years  he  had  not  had  an  opportunity  effectively 
to  occupy.  But  the  obvious  want  of  stamina  in  the  disturbing  force  soon  took 
away  from  the  Imperial  authorities  this  opportune  prestige,  and  very  little  politi- 
cal capital  was  secured  for  Imperialism  out  of  the  abortive  barricades,  and  inco- 
herent brickbats,  and  effusive  chantings  of  the  "  Marseillaise."  In  truth,  no  one 
had  anything  else  to  offer  just  then  in  place  of  the  Empire.  The  little  crisis  was 
no  test  whatever  of  the  Emperor's  hold  over  his  people,  or  of  his  power  to  deal 
with  a  popular  revolution.  To  me  it  seems  doubtful  whether  the  elections 
brought  out  for  certain  any  fact  with  which  the  world  might  not  already  have 
been  well  acquainted,  except  the  bare  fact  that  Orleanism  has  hardly  any  more 
of  vitality  in  it  than  Legitimacy.  Rochefort,  and  not  Prevost  Paradol,  is  the 
typical  figure  of  the  situation. 

The  popularity  and  the  success  of  Rochefort  and  his  paper  are  remarkable 
phenomena,  but  only  remarkable  in  the  old-fashioned  manner  of  the  straws  which 
show  how  the  wind  blows.  Rochefort's  success  is  due  to  the  fact  that  he  had  the 
good-fortune  to  begin  ridiculing  the  Empire  just  at  the  time  when  a  general  no- 
tion was  spreading  over  France  that  the  Empire  of  late  had  been  making  itself 
ridiculous.  Louis  Napoleon  had  reached  the  turning-point  of  his  career — had 
reached  and  passed  it.  The  country  saw  now  all  that  he  could  do.  The  bag  of 
tricks  was  played  out.  The  anticlimax  was  reached  at  last. 

The  oilmen,  the  crisis,  the  turning-point  of  Louis  Napoleon's  career  seems 
to  me  to  have  been  attained  when,  just  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Schieswig- 
Holstein  war — so  small  a  war  in  itself,  so  fateful  and  gigantic  in  its  results — he 
appealed  to  the  Emperors  and  Kings  of  Europe,  and  proposed  that  the  nations 
should  hold  a  Congress,  to  settle,  once  and  forever,  all  pending  disputes.  I 
think  the  attitude  of  Louis  Napoleon  at  that  moment  was  dignified,  command- 
ing, imperial.  His  peculiar  style,  forcible,  weighty,  measured — I  have  heard  it; 
well  described  as  a  "monumental"  style — came  out  with  great  effect  in  the  lan- 
guage of  the  appeal.  There  was  dignity,  and  grace,  there  was  what  Edmund 
Burke  so  appropriately  terms  "a  proud  humility,"  in  Louis  Napoleon's  allusion 
to  his  own  personal  experience  in  the  school  of  exile  and  adversity  as  an  excuse 
for  his  presuming  to  offer  advice  to  the  sovereigns  of  Europe.  One  was  remind- 
ed of  Henry  of  Navarre's  allusion  to  the  wind  of  adversity  which,  blowing  so 
long  upon  his  face,  had  prematurely  blanched  his  hair.  I  do  not  wonder  that 
the  proposed  Congress  never  met.  I  do  not  wonder  that  the  European  govern- 
ments put  it  aside — some  with  courteous  phrase  and  feigned  willingness  to  ac- 
cept the  scheme,  like  Russia  and  Austria ;  some  with  cold  and  brusque  rejec- 
tion, like  England.  Nothing  worth  trying  for  could  have  come  of  the  Congress. 
Events  were  brooding  of  which  France  and  England  knew  nothing,  and  which 
could  not  have  been  exorcised  away  by  any  resolutions  of  a  conclave  of  diplo- 
matists. But  that  was,  I  think,  the  last  occasion  when  Louis  Napoleon  held  any- 
thing like  a  commanding,  overruling  position  in  European  affairs,  and  even  then 
it  was  but  a  semblance.  After  that,  came  only  humiliations  and  reverses.  In  a 
diplomatic  sense,  nothing  could  be  more  complete  than  the  checkmate  which  the 
Emperor  of  the  French  drew  upon  himself  by  the  sheer  blundering  of  his  conduct 
with  regard  to  Prussia.  He  succeeded  in  placing  himself  before  the  world  in  the 
distinct  attitude  of  an  enemy  to  Prussia  ;  and  no  sooner  had  he,  by  assuming  this 
attitude,  forced  Prussia  to  take  a  defiant  tone,  than  he  suddenly  sank  down  into 
quietude.  He  had  bullied  to  no  purpose  ;  he  had  to  undergo  the  humiliation  of  see- 


THE  REAL  LOUIS  NAPOLEON.  21 

ing  Prussia  rise  in  public  estimation,  by  means  of  the  triumph  which  his  unneces- 
sary and  uncalled-for  hostility  had  enabled  her  to  win.  In  fact,  he  was  outgen- 
eralled  by  his  pupil,  Bismarck,  even  more  signally  than  he  had  previously  been 
outgeneralled  by  his  former  pupil,  Cavour.  More  disastrous  and  ghastly,  by  far, 
was  the  failure  of  his  Mexican  policy.  That  policy  began  in  falsehood  and 
treachery,  and  ended  as  it  deserved.  Poetic  and  dramatic  justice  was  fearfully 
rendered.  Never  did  Philip  II.,  of  Spain,  never  did  his  father,  never  did  Napo- 
leon I.,  never  did  Mendez  Pinto,  or  any  other  celebrated  liar,  exceed  the  deliberate 
monstrosity  of  the  falsehoods  which  were  told  by  Louis  Napoleon  or  Louis  Napo- 
leon's Ministers  at  his  order,  to  conceal,  during  the  earlier  stages  of  the  Mexican 
intervention,  the  fact  that  the  French  Emperor  had  z.  protege  in  the  background, 
who  was  to  be  seated  on  a  Mexican  throne.  The  world  is  not  much  affected  by 
perfidy  in  sovereigns.  It  laughs  at  the  perjuries  of  princes  as  Jove  does  at  those 
of  lovers.  But  it  could  not  overlook  the  appalling  significance  of  Louis  Napo- 
leon's defeat  in  that  disastrous  chapter  of  his  history.  Wisdom  after  the  event 
is  easy  work ;  but  many,  many  voices  had  told  Louis  Napoleon  beforehand  what 
would  come  of  his  Mexican  policy.  Not  to  speak  of  the  hints  and  advice  he 
received  from  the  United  States,  he  was  again  and  again  assured  by  the  late 
Marshal  O'Donnell,  then  Prime  Minister  of  Spain  ;  by  General  Prim,  who  com- 
manded the  allied  forces  during  the  earlier  part  of  the  Mexican  expedition  ;  by 
Prince  Napoleon,  by  many  others — that  neither  the  character  of  the  Mexican 
people  nor  the  proximity  of  the  United  States  would  allow  a  French  proconsul- 
ate to  be  established  in  Mexico  under  the  name  of  an  Empire.  It  is  a  certain 
fact  that  Louis  Napoleon  frequently  declared  that  the  foundation  of  that  Empire 
would  be  the  great  event  of  his  reign.  This  extraordinary  delusion  maintained 
a  hold  over  his  mind  long  after  it  had  become  apparent  to  all  the  world  that  the 
wretched  bubble  was  actually  bursting.  The  catastrophe  was  very  near  when 
Louis  Napoleon,  in  conversation  with  an  English  political  adventurer,  who  then 
was  a  Member  of  Parliament,  assured  him  that,  however  the  situation  might 
then  look  dark,  history  would  yet  have  to  record  that  he,  Louis  Napoleon,  had 
established  a  Mexican  Empire.  The  English  member  of  Parliament,  although 
ordinarily  a  very  shrewd  and  sceptical  sort  of  person,  was  actually  so  impressed 
with  the  earnestness  of  his  Imperial  interlocutor  that  he  returned  to  London  and 
wrote  a  pamphlet,  in  which,  to  the  utter  amazement  of  his  acquaintances,  he 
backed  the  Empire  of  Mexico  for  a  secure  existence,  and  said  to  it  esto  perpelua. 
The  pamphlet  was  hardly  in  circulation  when  the  collapse  came.  If  Louis  Na- 
poleon ever  believed  in  anything,  he  believed  in  the  Mexican  Empire.  He  be- 
lieved, too,  in  the  certain  success  of  the  Southern  Confederation.  No  Belgra- 
vian  Dundreary,  no  exaltee  Georgian  girl,  could  have  been  more  completely 
taken  by  surprise  when  the  collapse  of  that  enterprise  came  than  was  the  Em- 
peror Napoleon  III.,  whose  boundless  foresight  and  profound  sagacity  we  had 
all  for  years  been  applauding  to  the  echo.  "That  which  is  called  firmness  in  a 
King,"  said  Erskine,  "is  called  obstinacy  in  a  donkey."  That  which  is  called 
foresight  and  sagacity  in  an  Emperor,  is  often  what  we  call  blindness  and  blun- 
dering in  a  newspaper  correspondent.  The  question  is  whether  we  can  point  to 
any  great  event,  any  political  enterprise,  subsequent  to  his  successful  assumption 
of  the  Imperial  crown,  in  regard  to  which  Napoleon  III.,  if  called  upon  to  act  or 
to  judge,  did  not  show  the  same  aptitude  for  rash  judgments  and  unwise  actions  ? 
Certainly  no  great  thing  with  which  he  has  had  to  do  came  out  in  the  result  with 
anything  like  the  shape  he  meant  it  to  have.  The  Italian  Confederation,  with  the 
Pope  at  the  head  of  it  ;  the  Germany  irrevocably  divided  by  the  line  of  the  Main  ; 
the  Mexican  Empire;  the  "rectification"  of  frontier  on  the  Rhine;  the  acqui- 


22  THE  REAL  LOUIS  NAPOLEON. 

sition  of  Luxembourg  ;  these  are  some  of  the  great  Napoleonic  ideas,  by  the  suc- 
cess or  failure  of  which  we  may  fairly  judge  of  the  wisdom  of  their  author.  At 
home  he  has  simply  had  a  new  plan  of  government  every  year.  How  many  dif- 
ferent ways  of  dealing  with  the  press,  how  many  different  schemes  for  adjusting 
the  powers  of  the  several  branches  of  legislation,  have  been  magniloquently  an- 
nounced and  floated  during  the  last  few  years,  each  in  turn  to  fail  rather  more 
dismally  than  its  predecessor  ?  Now,  it  seems,  we  are  to  have  at  last  some- 
thing like  that  ministerial  responsibility  which  the  Imperial  lips  themselves  have 
so  often  described  as  utterly  opposed  to  the  genius  of  France.  Assuredly  it 
shows  great  mental  flexibility  to  be  able  thus  quickly  to  change  one's  policy  in 
obedience  to  a  warning  from  without.  It  is  a  far  better  quality  than  the  persist- 
ent treachery  of  a  Charles  I.,  or  the  stupid  doggedness  of  a  George  III.  But 
unless  it  be  a  characteristic  of  great  statesmanship  to  be  almost  always  out  in 
one's  calculations,  wrong  in  one's  predictions,  and  mistaken  in  one's  men,  the 
Emperor  has  for  years  been  in  the  habit  of  doing  things  which  are  directly  in- 
compatible with  the  character  of  a  great  statesman. 

Contrasting  the  Louis  Napoleon  of  action  and  reality  with  the  Louis  Napo- 
leon of  the  journals,  I  am  reminded  of  a  declaration  once  made  by  a  brilliant,  au- 
dacious, eccentric  Italian  journalist  and  politician,  Petruccelli  della  Gattina. 
Petruccelli  was,  and  perhaps  stiil  is,  a  member  of  the  Italian  Parliament,  and  he 
had  occasion  to  find  fault  with  some  office  or  dignity,  or  something  of  the  kind, 
conferred  by  Count  Cavour  on  the  Neapolitan,  Baron  Poerio,  whose  imprison- 
ment and  chains,  during  the  reign  of  the  beloved  Bomba,  aroused  the  eloquent 
anger  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  through  Gladstone's  efforts  and  appeals  became  the 
•wonder  and  the  horror  of  the  world.  Petruccelli  insisted  that  Poerio's  unde- 
served sufferings  were  his  only  political  claim.  "  You  know  perfectly  well,"  he 
said,  in  effect,  to  Cavour,  "that  there  is  no  such  man  as  the  Poerio  of  the  jour- 
nals. It  suited  us  to  invest  the  poor  victim  with  the  attributes  of  greatness,  and 
therefore,  we,  the  journalists,  created  a  Poerio  of  our  own.  This  imposed  upon 
the  world,  but  it  did  not  impose  upon  you,  and  you  have  no  right  to  take  our 
Poerio  au  serieux."  I  do  not  know  whether  the  journals  created  an  imag- 
inary Poerio,  but  I  am  convinced  that  they  have  created  an  imaginary  Louis  Na- 
poleon. The  world  in  general  now  so  much  prefers  the  imaginary  to  the  real 
Louis,  that  it  would*  for  the  present  be  as  difficult  to  dethrone  the  tnreal  and  set 
up  the  real,  as  it  would  be  to  induce  the  average  reader  to  accept  Lane's  genuine 
translation  of  the  "Arabian  Nights"  instead  of  the  familiar  translation  from  a 
sprightly,  flippant,  flashy  French  version,  which  hardly  bears  the  slightest  resem- 
blance to  the  original.  English  journalism  has  certainly  created  a  Disraeli  of  its 
own — a  dark,  subtle,  impenetrable,  sphinx-like  being,  who  never  smiles,  or  betrays 
outward  emotion,  or  is  taken  by  surprise,  or  makes  a  mistake.  This  Disraeli  is  an 
immense  success  with  the  public,  and  is  not  in  the  least  like  the  real  Disraeli,  who  is 
as  good-natured  and  genial  in  manner  as  he  is  bold  and  blundering  in  speech  and 
policy.  So,  on  a  wider  scale,  of  Louis  Napoleon.  We  are  all  more  or  less  responsi- 
ble for  the  fraud  on  the  public  ;  and,  indeed,  are  to  be  excused  on  the  ground  that, 
enamored  of  our  own  creation,  we  have  often  got  the  length  of  believing  in  it. 
We  have  thus  created  a  mysterious  being,  a  sphinx  of  far  greater  than  even 
Disraelian  proportions,  an  embodiment  of  silence  and  sagacity,  a  dark  creature 
endowed  with  super-human  self-control  and  patience  and  foresight;  one  who 
can  bend  all  things,  and  all  men,  and  destiny  itself  to  his  own  cajm,  inexorable  will. 

I  do  not  believe  there  is  anything  of  the  sphinx  about  Louis  Napoleon.  I  do 
not  believe  in  his  profound  sagacity,  or  his  foresight,  or  his  stupendous  self-control. 
I  have  grown  so  heretical  that  1  do  not  even  believe  him  to  be  a  particularly  taci- 


THE  REAL  LOuIS  NAPOLEON.  93 

turn  man.  I  am  well  satisfied  that  Louis  Napoleon  is  personally  a  good-natured, 
good-tempered,  undignified,  awkward  sort  of  man,  ungainly  of  gesture,  not  impres- 
sive in  speech,  a  man  quite  as  remarkable  for  occasional  outbursts  of  unexpected 
and  misplaced  confidence  as  for  a  silence  that  often  is,  if  I  may  use  such  an  expres- 
sion, purely  mechanical  and  unmeaning.  I  calmly  ask  my  confreres  of  the  press, 
is  it  not  a  fact  that  Louis  Napoleon  is  commonly  made  the  dupe  of  shallow  char- 
latans, that  he  has  several  times  received  and  admitted  to  confidential  counsel 
and  conference,  and  treated  as  influential  statesmen  and  unaccredited  ambassa- 
dors, utterly  obscure  American  or  English  busybodies  who  could  hardly  get  to 
speech  of  the  Mayor  of  a  town  at  home  ;  that  he  has  entered  into  signed  and 
sealed  engagements  with  impudent  adventurers  from  divers  countries,  under  the 
impression  that  they  could  render  him  vast  political  service  ;  that  he  has  paiu 
down  considerable  sums  of  money  to  subsidize  the  most  obscure  and  contempt- 
ible foreign  journals,  and  never  seemed  able  for  a  moment  to  comprehend  that  in 
England  and  the  United  States  no  journal  that  can  be  bought  for  any  price, 
however  high,  is  worth  buying  at  any  price,  however  low  ;  that  his  personal  in- 
clinations are  much  more  toward  quacks  and  pretenders  than  toward  men  of 
real  genius  and  influence  ;  that  Cobden  was  one  of  the  very  few  great  men  Louis 
Napoleon  ever  appreciated,  while  impostors,  and  knaves,  and  blockheads,  of  all 
kinds,  could  readily  find  access  to  his  confidence  ?  Of  course,  a  man  might  pos- 
sibly be  a  great  sovereign  although  he  had  these  weaknesses  ;  but  the  Louis  Na- 
poleon of  journalism  is  not  endowed  with  these,  or  indeed  with  any  other  weaic- 
nesses. 

Those  who  know  Paris  well,  know  that  there  is  yet  another  Louis  Napoleon 
there,  equally  I  trust  a  fiction  with  him  of  the  journals.  I  speak  of  the  Louis 
Napoleon  of  private  gossip,  the  hero  of  unnumbered  amours  such  as  De  Gram- 
mont  or  Casanova  might  wonder  at.  I  have  heard  stories  poured  into  my  patient 
but  sceptical  ears  which  ascribed  to  Louis  Napoleon  of  to-day,  adventures  illus- 
trating a  happy  and  brilliant  combination  of  Haroun  Al  Raschid  and  Lauzun — 
the  disguises  of  the  Caliph  employed  for  the  purposes  of  Don  Juan.  Now,  Louis 
Napoleon  certainly  had,  and  perhaps  even  still  has,  his  frailties  of  this  class,  but  I 
reject  the  Lauzun  or  Don  Juan  theory  quite  as  resolutely  as  the  sphinx  theory. 

What  we  all  do  really  know  of  Louis  Napoleon  is,  that  having  the  advan- 
tage of  a  name  of  surpassing  prestige,  and  at  a  moment  of  unexampled  chances  not 
created  by  him,  he  succeeded  in  raising  himself  to  the  throne  made  by  his  uncle  ; 
that  when  there,  he  held  his  place  firmly,  and  by  maintaining  severe  order  in  a 
country  already  weary  of  disturbance  and  barren  revolution,  he  favored  and  stim- 
ulated the  development  of  the  material  resources  of  France  ;  that  he  entered  on 
several  enterprises  in  foreign  politics,  not  one  of  which  brought  about  the  end 
for  which  it  was  undertaken,  and  some  of  which  were  ludicrous,  disastrous  fail- 
ures ;  that  he  strove  to  compensate  France  for  the  loss  of  her  civil  liberty,  by 
audaciously  attempting  to  make  her  the  dictator  of  Europe,  and  that  he  utterly 
failed  in  both  objects  ;  for  here  toward  the  close  of  his  rule,  France  seems  far 
more  eager  for  domestic  freedom  than  ever  she  was  since  the  coup  d'etat,  while 
her  influence  over  the  nations  of  Europe  is  considerably  less  than  it  was  at  any 
period  since  the  fall  of  Sebastopol.  Now,  if  this  be  success,  I  want  to  know 
what  is  failure?  If  these  results  argue  the  existence  of  profound  sagacity,  I 
want  to  know  what  would  show  a  lack  of  sagacity  ?  Was  Louis  Napoleon  sa- 
gacious when  he  entered  Lombardy,  to  set  Italy  free  from  the  Alps  to  the  sea, 
and  sagacious  also  when,  after  a  campaign  of  a  few  weeks,  he  suddenly  abandoned 
the  enterprise  never  to  resume  it  ?  Was  he  wise  when  he  told  Cavour  he  would 
never  permit  the  annexation  of  Naples,  and  wise  also  when,  immediately  after, 


24  THE  REAL  LOUIS  NAPOLEON. 

he  permitted  it  ?  Was  he  a  great  statesman  when  he  entered  on  the  Mexican 
expedition,  and  also  a  great  statesman  when  he  abandoned  it  and  his  unfortunate 
pupil,  puppet,  and  victim  together?  Did  it  show  a  statesmanlike  judgment 
to  bully  Prussia  until  he  had  gone  near  to  making  her  an  irreconcilable  ene- 
my, and  also  a  statesmanlike  judgment  then  to  "cave  in,"  and  declare  that 
he  never  meant  anything  offensive?  Was  it  judicious  to  demand  a  rec- 
tification of  frontier  on  the  Rhine,  and  judicious  also  to  abandon  the  demand 
in  a  hurry,  when  it  was  received  as  anybody  might  have  known  that  a 
proud,  brave  nation,  flushed  with  a  splendid  success,  would  surely  have  re- 
ceived it?  Did  it  display  great  foresight  to  count  with  certainty  that  the 
Southern  Confederation  would  succeed,  and  that  Austria  would  win  an  easy  vic- 
tory over  Prussia  ?  Was  it  judicious  to  instruct  an  official  spokesman  to  declare 
that  France  had  taken  steps  to  assure  herself  against  any  spread  of  Prussian  in- 
fluence beyond  the  Main,  and  to  have  to  stand  next  day,  amazed  and  confounded, 
before  an  amazed  and  amused  Europe,  when  Bismarck  made  practical  answer  by 
contemptuously  unrolling  the  treaties  of  alliance  actually  concluded  between 
Erance  and  the  principal  States  of  South  Germany  ?  Was  it  a  proof  of  a  great 
ruling  mind  to  declare  that  France  could  never  endure  a  system  of  ministerial 
responsibility,  and  also  a  proof  of  a  great  ruling  mind  to  declare  that  this  is  the 
one  thing  needful  to  her  contentment  ?  '  All  this  bundle  of  paradoxes  one  will 
have  to  sustain,  if  he  is  content  to  accept  as  a  genuine  being  that  monstrous  par- 
adox, the  Louis  Napoleon  of  the  press.  Of  course,  I  do  not  deny  to  Louis  Na- 
poleon certain  qualities  of  greatness.  But  I  believe  the  public  was  not  a  whit 
more  gravely  mistaken  when  it  regarded  the  King  street  exile  as  a  dreamy  dunce, 
than  it  is  now,  when  it  regards  Napoleon  III.  as  a  ruler  of  consummate  wisdom. 
There  was  much  of  sound  sense  as  well  as  wit  in  the  saying  ascribed  to 
Thiers,  that  the  second  Empire  had  developed  two  great  statesmen — Cavour 
and  Bismarck.  I  do  not  know  of  any  one  great  idea,  worthy  of  being  called  a 
contribution  to  the  science  of  government,  which  Louis  Napoleon  has  yet  embod- 
ied, either  in  words  or  actions.  The  recent  elections,  and  the  events  succeeding 
them,  only  demonstrate  the  failure  of  Imperialism  or  Caesarism,  after  a  trial  and 
after  opportunities  such  as  it  probably  will  never  have  again  in  Europe.  I  cer- 
tainly do  not  expect  any  complete  collapse  during  the  present  reign.  Doubtless 
the  machine  will  outlast  the  third  Emperor's  time.  He  has  sense  and  dexter- 
ity enough  to  trim  his  sails  to  each  breeze  that  passes,  and  he  will,  probably, 
hold  the  helm  till  his  right  hand  loses  its  cunning  with  its  vital  power.  But  I  see 
no  evidence  whatever  which  induces  me  to  believe  that  he  has  founded  a  dynasty 
or  created  an  enduring  system  of  any  kind.  Some  day  France  will  shake  off 
the  whole  thing  like  a  nightmare.  Meantime,  however,  I  am  anxious  to  help  in 
dethroning  the  Louis  Napoleon  of  the  journals  rather  than  him  of  the  Tuileries. 
The  latter  has  many  good  qualities  which  the  former  is  never  allowed  to  exhibit. 
1  believe  the  true  Louis  Napoleon  has  a  remarkably  kind  and  generous  heart ; 
that  he  is  very  liberal  and  charitable  ;  that  he  has  much  affection  in  him,  and  is 
very  faithful  to  his  old  friends  and  old  servants  ;  that  people  who  come  near 
him  love  him  much  ;  that  he  is  free  and  kindly  of  speech  ;  that  his  personal  de- 
fects are  rather  those  of  a  warm  and  rash,  than  of  a  cold  and  stern  nature.  But 
I  think  it  is  high  time  that  we  were  done  with  the  melodramatic,  dime-romance, 
darkly  mysterious  Louis  Napoleon  of  the  journals.  He  belongs  to  the  race  of 
William  Tell,  of  the  Wandering  Jew,  the  Flying  Dutchman,  the  Sphinx  to 
whom  he  is  so  often  compared,  the  mermaid,  the  sea-serpent,  Byron's  Corsair, 
and  Thaddeus  of  Warsaw. 


EUGENIE,  EMPRESS  OF  THE  FRENCH. 


THERE  are  certain  men  and  women  in  history  who  seem  to  have  a  pecu- 
liarity, independent  of  their  merits  or  demerits,  greatness  or  littleness, 
virtues  or  crimes — a  peculiarity  which  distinguishes  them  from  others  as  great 
or  as  little,  as  virtuous  or  as  criminal.  They  are,  first  and  above  all  things,  in- 
teresting. It  is  not  easy  to  describe  what  the  elements  are  which  make  up  this 
attribute.  Certainly  genius  or  goodness,  wit  or  wisdom,  splendid  public  services, 
great  beauty,  or  even  great  suffering,  will  not  always  be  enough  to  create  it.  The 
greatest  English  king  since  the  First  Edward  was  assuredly  William  the  Third  ; 
the  greatest  military  commanders  England  has  ever  had  were  Marlborough  and 
Wellington  ;  but  these  three  will  hardly  be  called  by  any  one  interesting  per- 
sonages in  the  sense  in  which  I  now  use  the  word.  Why  Nelson  should  be  in- 
teresting and  Wellington  not  so,  Byron  interesting  and  Wordsworth  not  so,  is 
perhaps  easy  enough  to  explain  ;  but  it  is  not  quite  easy  to  see  why  Rousseau 
should  be  so  much  more  interesting  than  Voltaire,  Goethe  than  Schiller,  Mozart 
than  Handel,  and  so  on  through  a  number  of  illustrations,  the  accuracy  of 
which  nearly  all  persons  would  probably  acknowledge.  Where  history  and  pub- 
lic opinion  and  sentiment  have  to  deal  with  the  lives  and  characters  of  women,  the 
peculiarity  becomes  still  more  deeply  emphasized.  What  gifts,  what  graces, 
what  rank,  what  misfortunes  have  ever  surrounded  any  queens  or  princesses 
known  to  history  with  the  interest  which  attaches  to  Mary  Stuart  and  Marie 
Antoinette  ?  Lady  Jane  Grey  was  an  incomparably  nobler  woman  than  either, 
and  suffered  to  the  full  as  deeply  as  either  ;  yet  what  place  has  she  in  men's  feel- 
ings and  interest  -compared  with  theirs  ?  Who  cares  about  Anna  Boleyn,  though 
she  too  shared  a  throne  and  mounted  a  scaffold  ? 

Absit  omen  !  I  am  about  to  speak  cf  an  illustrious  living  lady,  who  has  in 
common  with  Mary  Stuart  and  Marie  Antoinette  two  things  at  least :  she  has 
a  French  sovereign  for  a  husband,  and  she  has  the  fame  of  beauty.  But  she  has 
likewise  that  other  peculiarity  of  which  I  spoke  :  she  is  interesting.  It  is  only 
speaking  by  the  card  to  say  that  by  far  the  most  interesting  of  all  the  imperial 
and  royal  ladies  now  living  is  Eugenie,  Empress  of  the  French.  I  think  there 
are  princesses  in  Europe  more  beautiful  and  even  more  graceful  than  she  is,  or 
than  she  ever  could  have  been  ;  I  fancy  there  are  some  much  more  highly  gifted 
with  intellect ;  but  there  is  no  woman  living  in  any  European  palace  in  whom 
the  general  world  feels  half  so  much  interest.  There  is  not  the  slightest  reason 
to  believe  that  she  is  a  woman  of  really  penetrating  or  commanding  intellect, 
and  should  she  be  happy  enough  to  live  out  her  life  in  the  Tuileries  and  die 
peacefully  in  her  bed,  history  will  find  but  little  to  say  about  her,  g~>od  or  bad. 
Yet  so  long  as  her  memory  remains  in  men's  minds,  it  will  be  as  that  of  a  princess 
who  had  above  ail  things  the  gift  of  being  interesting — the  power  of  attracting 
toward  herself  the  eyes,  the  admiration,  the  curiosity,  the  wonder  of  all  the  civil- 
ized world 

"We  count  time  by  heart-throbs,  not  by  figures  on  a  dial,"  says  a  poet  who 
once  nearly  secured  immortality,  Philip  James  Bailey.  There  certainly  are 
people  whose  age  seems  to  defy  counting  by  figures  on  a  dial.  Ask  anybody 
what  two  pictures  are  called  up  in  his  mind  when  he  hears  the  names  of  Queen 
Victoria  and  the  Empress  of  the  French,  no  matter  whether  he  has  ever  seen 
the  two  illustrious  ladies  or  not.  In  the  case  of  the  former  I  may  safely  ven- 


26  EUGENIE,  EMPRESS  OF  THE  FRENCH. 

ture  to  answer  for  him  that  he  sees  the  face  and  figure  of  a  motherly,  homely 
body  ;  a  woman  who  has  got  quite  beyond  the  age  when  people  observe  how  she 
dresses  ;  to  whom  personal  appearance  is  no  longer  of  any  importance  or  inter- 
est. In  the  case  of  the  latter  he  sees  a  dazzling  couit  beauty  ;  a  woman  who, 
though  not  indeed  in  her  youth,  is  still  in  a  glorious  prime  ;  a  woman  to  capti- 
vate hearts,  and  inspire  poets,  and  set  scandal  going,  and  adorn  a  ball-room  or  a 
throne.  The  first  instinctive  idea  would  be,  I  think,  that  the  Empress  of  the 
French  belonged  positively  to  a  later  generation  than  the  good,  unattractive, 
dowdyish  Queen  of  England.  Yet  I  believe  the  difference  in  actual  years  is 
very  slight.  To  be  sure,  you  will  find  in  any  almanac  that  Queen  Victoria  was 
born  on  the  24th  of  May,  1819,  and  is  consequently  very  near  to  fifty-one  years 
of  age  ;  while  the  fair  Euge'nie  is  set  down  as  having  been  born  on  May  5th,  1826, 
and  consequently  would  now  appear  to  be  only  in  her  forty-fourth  year.  But 
then  Queen  Victoria  was  born  in  the  purple,  and  cannot,  poor  thing,  make  any 
attempt  at  reducing  by  one  single  year  the  full  figure  of  her  age.  History  has 
taken  an  inexorable,  ineffaceable  note  of  the  day  and  hour  of  her  birth  ;  and  even 
court  flattery  cannot  affect  to  ignore  the  record.  Now  Eugenie  was  born  in 
happy  obscurity  ;  even  the  place  of  her  birth  is  not  known  by  the  public  with  that 
certainty  which  alone  satisfies  sceptics  ;  and  I  have  heard  that  the  date  recorded  as 
that  of  her  natal  hour  is  only  a  graceful  fiction,  a  pretty  bit  of  polite  biography. 
Certainly  I  have  heard  it  stoutly  maintained  that  if  any  historian  or  critic  were 
now  to  be  as  ungallant  in  his  researches  as  John  Wilson  Croker  was  in  the  case 
of  Lady  Morgan  (was  it  not  Lady  Morgan  ?),  he  would  find  that  the  birth  of  the 
brilliant  Empress  of  the  French  would  have  to  be  dated  back  a  few  years,  and 
that  after  all  the  difference  between  her  and  the  elderly  Queen  Victoria  is  less 
an  affair  of  time  than  of  looks  and  of  heart-throbs. 

About  a  dozen  years,  I  suppose,  have  passed  away  since  I  saw  the  Empress 
Eugenie  and  Queen  Victoria  sitting  side  by  side.  Assuredly  the  difference  even 
then  might  well  have  been  called  a  contrast,  although  the  Queen  was  in  her  happi- 
est time,  and  has  worn  out  terribly  fast  since  that  period.  But  the  quality  which 
above  all  others  Queen  Victoria  wanted  was  just  that  in  which  the  Empress  of 
the  French  is  supreme — the  quality  of  imperial,  womanly  grace.  I  have  never 
been  a  rapturous  admirer  of  the  beauty  of  the  Empress  ;  a  certain  narrowness 
of  contour  in  the  face,  the  eyes  too  closely  set  together,  and  an  appearance  of  ar- 
tificiality in  every  movement  of  the  features,  seem  to  me  to  detract  very  much 
from  the  charms  of  her  countenance.  But  her  queenly  grace  of  gesture,  of  atti- 
tude, of  form,  of  motion,  must  be  admitted  to  be  beyond  cavil,  and  superb.  She 
looks  just  the  woman  on  whom  any  sort  of  garment  would  hang  with  grace  and 
attractiveness  ;  a  blanket  would  become  like  a  regal  mantle  if  it  fell  round  her 
shoulders  ;  I  verily  believe  she  would  actually  look  graceful  in  Mary  Walker's 
costume,  which  I  consider  decidedly  the  most  detestable,  in  an  artistic  sense, 
ever  yet  indued  by  mortal  woman.  Poor  Queen  Victoria  looked  awkward  and 
homely  indeed  by  the  side  of  this  graceful,  noble  form  ;  this  figure  that  ex- 
pressed so  well  the  combination  of  suppleness  and  affluence,  of  imperial  dignity 
and  charming  womanhood.  Time  has  not  of  late  spared  the  face  of  the  Empress 
of  the  French.  Lines  and  hollows  are  growing  fast  there  ;  the  bright  eyes  are 
sinking  deeper  into  their  places  ;  the  complexion  is  fading  and  clouding  ;  mali- 
cious people  now  say  that,  like  that  of  the  lady  in  the  "  School  for  Scandal,"  it 
comes  in  the  morning  and  goes  in  the  night ;  and  the  hair  is  apparently  fast 
growing  thin.  But  the  grace  of  form  and  movement  is  still  there,  unimpaired 
and  unsurpassed.  The  whitest  and  finest  shoulders  still  surmount  a  noble  bust, 
which,  but  that  its  amplitude  somewhat  exceeds  the  severe  proportions  of  antique 


EUGENIE,  EMPRESS  OF  THE  FRENCH.  27 

Grecian  beauty,  might  be  reproduced  in  marble  to  illustrate  the  contour  of  a 
Venus  or  a  Juno.  I  have  seldom  looked  at  the  Empress  of  the  French  or  at  any 
picture  or  bust  of  her  without  thinking  how  Mary  Wo.tley  Montagu  would  have 
gone  into  bold  and  eloquent  raptures  over  the  superb  womanhood  of  that  splen- 
did form. 

Well,  the  face  always  disappointed  me  at  least.  It  seems  to  me  cold,  artifi- 
cial, narrow,  insincere.  It  wants  nobleness.  It  does  not  impress  me  as  being 
the  face  of  a  frivolous  woman,  a  coquette,  a  court  butterfly  ;  but  rather  that  of 
one  who  is  always  playing  a  part  which  sometimes  wearies.  If  I  were  to  form 
my  own  impressions  of  the  Empress  of  the  French  merely  from  her  face,  I 
should  set  her  down  as  a  keen,  politic  woman,  with  brains  enough  to  be  crafty, 
not  enough  to  be  great.  I  should  set  her  down  as  a'woman  who  needs  and 
loves  the  stimulus  of  incessant  excitement,  just  as  much  as  a  certain  class  of  ac- 
tress does.  Indeed,  I  think  I  have  seen  in  the  face  of  more  than  one  actress  just 
such  an  habitual  expression,  off  the  stage,  as  one  may  see  in  the  countenance  of 
the  French  Empress.  I  fear  that  sweet  and  gracious  smile,  which  is  said  to  be 
so  captivating  to  those  for  whose  immediate  and  special  homage  it  is  put  on, 
changes  into  sudden  blankness  or  weariness  when  its  momentary  business  has 
been  done.  Sam  Slick  tells  us  of  a  lady  whose  smile  dropped  from  her  face  the 
moment  the  gazer's  eyes  were  withdrawn  "like  a  petticoat  when  the  strings 
break  ;  "  and  if  I  might  apply  this  irreverent  comparison  to  the  smile  of  an  Em- 
press, I  would  say  that  I  think  I  have  noted  just  such  a  change  in  the  expres- 
sion of  the  brilliant  Eugdnie.  Indeed,  it  must  be  a  tiresome  part,  that  which 
she  has  had  to  play  through  all  these  resplendent  years  ;  a  part  thrilling  with 
danger,  made  thorny  by  many  sharp  vexations.  Were  the  Empress  of  the 
French  the  mere  belle  of  a  court,  she  might  doubtless  have  joyfully  swallowed 
all  the  bitternesses  for  the  sake  of  the  brightness  and  splendor  of  her  lot ;  were 
she  a  woman  of  high,  imperial  genius,  a  Maria  Theresa,  an  Anne  of  Austria, 
she  might  have  found  in  the  mere  enjoyment  of  power,  or  in  the  nobler  aspirings 
of  patriotism,  abundant  compensation  for  her  individual  vexations.  But  being 
neither  a  mere  coquette  nor  a  woman  of  genius,  being  neither  great  enough  to 
rise  wholly  above  her  personal  troubles,  nor  small  enough  to  creep  under  them 
untouched,  she  must  have  suffered  enough  to  render  her  life  very  often  a  weary 
trial ;  and  the  traces  of  that  weariness  can  be  seen  on  her  face  when  the  court 
look  is  dropped  for  a  moment. 

The  Empress  seems  to  have  passed  through  three  phases  of  character,  or  at 
least  to  have  made  on  the  public  opinion  of  France  three  successive  and  differ- 
ent impressions.  For  a  long  time  she  was  set  down  as  a  mere  coquette,  a  crea- 
ture whose  soul  soared  no  higher  than  the  aspiration  after  a  bonnet  or  a  bracelet, 
whose  utmost  genius  exhausted  itself  in  the  invention  of  a  crinoline.  Indeed,  it 
may  be  questioned  whether  any  invention  known  to  modern  Europe  had  so  sud- 
den and  wonderful  a  success  or  made  the  inventor  so  talked  about  as  Eugenie's 
famous  jupon  d'acier.  A  sour  and  cynical  Republican  of  my  acquaintance 
once  declared  that  anybody  might  have  known  the  Empress  to  be  a  parvemie 
by  the  mere  fact  that  she  could  and  did  invent  a  petticoat ;  for  he  maintained 
that  no  born  emperor  or  empress  ever  was  known  to  have  done  even  so  much  in 
the  way  of  invention.  Decidedly,  the  Empress  did  a  great  deal  of  harm  in  those 
her  earlier  and  more  brilliant  dnys.  To  her  influence  and  example  may  be  as- 
cribed the  passion  for  mere  extravagance  and  variety  of  dress  which  has  spread 
of  late  years  among  all  the  fashionable  and  would-be  fashionable  women  of  Eu 
rope  and  America.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  Empress  of  the  French 
demoralized,  in  this  sense,  the  womanhood  of  two  generations.  How  literally 


23  EUGENIE,  EMPRESS  OF  THE  FRENCH. 

debauching  her  influence  was  to  the  women  immediately  under  its  control,  the 
women  of  the  fashionable  world  of  Paris,  1  need  not  stop  to  tell.  Graceful,  gra- 
cious, and  elegant  as  she  is,  she  did  undoubtedly  succeed  in  branding  with  a 
stamp  of  vulgarity  the  brilliant  court  of  the  Second  Empire.  It  is  not  wonder- 
ful if  scandal  said  coarse  and  bitter  things  about  the  goddess  of  prodigality  who 
presided  over  the  revels  of  the  Tuileries.  The  most  absurd  stories  used  to  be 
told  of  the  amusements  which  went  on  in  the  private  gardens  of  the  palace  and 
in  ics  inner  circles  ;  and  the  levity  and  occasional  flightiness  of  a  vivacious  young 
woman  thirsting  for  fresh  gayeties  and  new  excitements  were  perverted  and  mag- 
nified into  reckless  and  wanton  extravagances.  Of  course  it  was  inevitable  that 
there  should  be  scandal  over  the  birth  of  the  Prince  Imperial.  Were  the  Em- 
press Euge'nie  chaste  as  ice,  pure  as  unsunned  snow,  she  could  not,  under  the 
circumstances,  escape  that  calumny. 

About  the  time  of  her  sudden  and  mysterious  escapade  to  London,  the  Em- 
press began  to  emerge  a  little  from  the  character  of  a  mere  woman  of  fashion, 
and  to  become  known  and  felt  as  a  politician.  People  say  that  some  at  least  of 
the  influence  and  control  which  she  began  to  obtain  over  her  husband  was  owing 
to  her  knowledge  of  his  many  infidelities  and  his  reluctance  to  provoke  her  into 
open  quarrel.  Unless  Euge'nie  was  wholly  free  from  the  jealousy  which  is  sup- 
posed to  lie  in  the  heart  of  every  other  woman,  she  must  have  suffered  cruelly 
in  this  way  for  many  years.  In  her  own  court  circles,  at  her  own  side,  were 
ladies  whom  universal  report  designated  as  successive  mattresses  en  titre  of  the 
Emperor  Napoleon.  Stories,  too,  of  his  indulgence  in  low  and  gross  amours 
were  told  everywhere,  and,  true  or  false  (charity  itself  could  not  well  doubt  that 
some  of  them  were  true),  must  have  reached  the  Empress's  ears.  She  suffered 
severely,  and  she  took  to  politics — perhaps  as  a  harassed  man  sometimes  takes 
to  drinking.  Her  political  influence  was,  in  its  day,  simply  disastrous.  She  was 
always  on  the  wrong  side,  and  she  was  always  impetuous,  unreasoning,  and  per- 
tinacious, as  cynical  people  say  is  the  way  of  women.  She  became  a  devotee  of 
the  narrowest  kind  ;  and  just  as  Madame  de  Maintenon's  religious  bigotry  did 
infinitely  more  harm  to  France  than  the  vilest  profligacy  of  a  Pompadour  or  a 
Dubarry  could  have  done,  so  the  religious  fervor  of  the  Empress  Euge'nie 
threatened  at  one  time  to  prove  a  worse  thing  for  the  State  and  for  Europe  than 
if  she  had  really  carried  on  during  all  her  lifetime  the  palace  orgies  which  her 
enemies  ascribed  to  her.  Reaction,  Ultramontanism,  illiberalism,  superstition, 
found  a  patroness  and  leader  in  her.  She  fought  for  the  continued  occupation 
of  Rome;  she  battled  against  the  unity  of  Italy;  she  recommended  and  urged 
the  Mexican  expedition.  Louis  Napoleon  is  personally  a  good-natured,  easy- 
going sort  of  man,  averse  to  domestic  disputes,  fully  conscious,  no  doubt,  of  his 
frequent  liability  to  domestic  censure.  What  wonder  if  European  politics  some- 
times had  to  suffer  heavily  for  the  tolerated  presence  of  this  or  that  too  notori- 
ous lady  in  the  inner  circles  of  the  French  court  ?  "  Who  is  the  Countess  de 

?"  I  once  asked  of  a  Parisian  friend  who  was  attached  to  the  Imperial 

household — I  was  speaking  of  a  lady  whose  beauty  and  whose  audacities  of  dress 
were  then  much  talked  of  in  the  French  capital.  "The  latest  favorite,"  was  the 
reply.  "  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  her  presence  at  court  cost  another  ten  years  of 
the  occupation  of  Rome." 

With  the  Empress's  introduction  to  politics  and  political  intrigue,  the  era  of 
scandal  seems  to  have  closed  for  her.  She  dressed  as  brilliantly  and  extrava- 
gantly as  ever,  and  she  would  take  as  much  pains  about  her  toilet  for  the  benefit 
of  Persigny  and  Baroche  and  Billault  at  a  Council  of  State  as  for  a  ball  in  the 
Tuileries.  She  received  the  same  sort  of  company,  was  surrounded  by  the 


EUGENIE,  EMPRESS  OF  THE  FRENCH.  29 

same  ladies  and  the  same  cavaliers  as  ever.  But  she  ceased  to  be  herself  a  sub- 
ject of  scandal — a  fact  which  is  not  a  little  remarkable  when  one  remembers 
how  many  bitter  enemies  she  made  for  herself  at  this  period  of  her  career.  She 
seems  to  have  seriously  contemplated  the  assumption  of  a  great  political  and 
religious  part — the  part  of  the  patroness  and  protectress  of  the  Papacy.  I  be- 
lieve she  studied  hard  to  educate  herself  for  this  part,  and  indeed  for  the  work 
in  politics  generally  which  devolved  upon  her.  The  position  of  Vicegerent, 
assigned  to  her  by  the  Emperor  during  his  absence  in  the  Lombardy  campaign, 
stirred  up  political  ambition  within  her,  and  she  seems  to  have  shown  a  remark- 
able aptitude  for  political  work.  She  certainly  sustained  the  opinion  expressed 
by  John  Stuart  Mill  in  his  "Subjection  of  Women,"  that  the  business  of  politics, 
from  which  laws  in  general  shut  women  out,  is  just  the  one  intellectual  occupa- 
tion in  which,  whenever  they  have  had  a  chance,  they  have  proved  themselves 
the  equals  of  men.  When  Eugenie  was  raised  to  the  Imperial  throne,  she  ap- 
pears to  have  had  no  better  education  than  any  young  Spanish  woman  of  her 
class,  and  that  certainly  is  not  much.  A  lady  once  assured  me  that  she  was 
one  of  a  group  who  were  presented  to  the  Empress  at  the  Tuileries,  and  that 
there  being  in  the  group  two  beautiful  girls  from  America,  to  whom  Eugdnie  de- 
sired to  be  particularly  gracious,  her  Imperial  Majesty  began  to  ask  them  several 
questions  about  their  native  land,  and  astonished  them  almost  beyond  the  ca- 
pacity to  reply  by  kindly  inquiring  whether  they  had  come  from  New  York 
"over  the  sea,  or  over  the  land."  But  the  Empress  has  read  up  a  good  deal, 
and  mastered  much  other  knowledge  besides  that  of  geography,  since  those  salad 
days.  Meanwhile,  she  became  more  and  more  the  divinity  of  the  Ultramon- 
tanes ;  and  the  French  court  presented  the  interesting  spectacle  of  having  two 
rival  and  extreme  parties,  one  led  by  the  Emperor's  wife,  and  the  other  by  his 
cousin,  Prince  Napoleon,  between  whom  the  Emperor  himself  maintained  an 
attitude  something  like  that  of  the  central  figure  in  a  game  of  seesaw.  I  pre- 
sume there  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  Empress  regarded  her  husband's  portly 
cousin  with  a  cordial  detestation.  She  is  not  a  woman  endowed  with  a  keen 
sense  of  humor,  nor  in  any  case  would  she  be  quite  likely  to  enjoy  anything 
which  was  humorous  at  her  own  expense  ;  and  Prince  Napoleon  is  credited 
broadly  with  having  said  things  concerning  her  which  doubtless  made  his  friends 
and  followers  and  boon  companions  laugh,  but  which,  reported  to  her,  as  they 
assuredly  would  be,  must  have  made  her  cheek  flame  and  her  lips  quiver.  More- 
over, the  Red  Prince  was  notoriously  in  the  habit  of  turning  into  jest  some  things 
more  sacred  in  the  eyes  of  the  Imperial  devotee  than  even  her  own  reputation- 
She  feared  his  tongue,  his  reckless  wit,  his  smouldering  ambition.  She  feared 
him  for  her  boy,  whose  rival  and  enemy  he  might  come  to  be ;  and  Prince  Na- 
poleon had  more  sons  than  one.  Therefore  the  rivalry  was  keen  and  bitter. 
She  was  for  the  Pope  ;  he  was  for  Italy  and  the  Revolution.  She  sympathized 
with  the  South  in  the  American  civil  war ;  Prince  Napoleon  was  true  to  his 
principles  and  stood  by  the  North.  She  favored  the  Mexican  enterprise ;  he 
opposed  it.  She  was  for  all  manner  of  repressive  action  as  regarded  political 
speaking  and  writing  ;  he  was  for  a  free  platform  and  free  press.  Her  triumph 
came  when,  during  the  Emperor's  visit  to  Algeria,  Prince  Napoleon  delivered 
his  famous  Ajaccio  speech — a  speech  terribl)  true  and  shockingly  indiscreet — 
and  was  punished  by  an  Imperial  rebuke,  whicn  led  him  to  resign  all  his  politi- 
cal offices  and  withdraw  absolutely  from  public  life  for  several  successive  years. 
But  just  when  the  Empress  seemed  to  have  the  field  all  to  herself,  her  po- 
litical influence  began  somehow  to  wane.  Perhaps  she  grew  a  little  weary  of  the 
work  of  statecraft ;  perhaps  she  had  not  been  so  successful  in  some  of  her 


30  EUGENIE,  EMPRESS  OF  THE  FRENCH. 

favorite  projects  as  she  bad  expected  to  be.  The  Mexican  expedition  turned  out 
a  dismal,  ghastly  failure,  and  that  enterprise  had  always  been  regarded  as  the 
joint  work  of  the  two  influences  which  cynical  people  say  have  usually  been  most 
disastrous  in  politics — the  priest  and  the  petticoat.  Then  the  idea  of  working 
out  the  scheme  of  European  politics  from  the  central  point  of  the  Tuileries 
was  suddenly  exploded  by  the  unexpected  intrusion  of  Prussia,  and  the  dazzling 
victory  in  which  the  Bonaparte  as  well  as  the  Hapsburg  was  overthrown  and 
humbled.  The  old  framework  of  things  was  disjointed  by  this  surprising  event. 
A  new  political  centre  of  gravity  had  to  be  sought  for  Europe.  France  was 
rudely  pushed  aside.  The  fair  Empress,  who  had  been  training  herself  for  quite 
a  different  condition  of  things,  found  herself  now  confronted  by  new,  strange, 
and  bewildering  combinations.  One  thing  is  highly  to  her  credit.  I  have  been 
assured  by  people  who  claim  to  know  something  of  the  matter,  that  her  earnest 
influence  was  used  to  induce  the  French  Government  to  accept,  without  remon- 
strance, the  new  situation.  While  Louis  Napoleon  was  committing  the  inexcusa- 
ble blunder  of  feeling  his  way  towards  a  war  with  Prussia,  and  thereby  subject- 
ing himself  to  the  ignominy  of  having  to  draw  hastily  back,  the  voice  of  the 
Empress,  I  am  assured,  was  always  raised  for  peace.  But  I  think  the  new  situ- 
ation was  too  much  for  her.  She  had  made  up  for  a  game  of  politics  between 
the  Pope  and  Italy;  when  other  players  and  other  stakes  appeared,  the  Empress 
was  disinclined  to  undertake  a  new  course  of  education.  She  thereupon  passed 
into  the  third  phase — that  of  philanthropic  devotee,  Lady  Bountiful,  and  mother 
of  her  people  ;  and  since  then,  if  she  cannot  be  said  to  have  grown  universally 
popular,  she  may  fairly  be  described  as  having  got  rid  of  nearly  all  her  former 
unpopularity.  Her  good  deeds  began  to  be  magnified  everywhere,  and  even  an- 
cient enemies  were  content  to  sing  her  praises,  or,  at  least,  to  hear  them  sung. 

Undoubtedly  she  has  a  kindly,  charitable  heart,  and  can  do  heroic  as  well  as 
graceful  things.  Her  famous  visitation  of  the  cholera  hospitals  may  doubtless 
have  been  clone  partly  for  effect,  but  even  in  this  sense  it  showed  a  lofty  apprecia- 
tion of  the  duties  of  an  Fmpress,  and  could  not  have  been  conceived  or  carried 
out  by  an  ignoble  nature.  When  the  cholera  appeared  in  Madrid,  the  fat,  li- 
centious woman  who  then  cumbered  and  disgraced  the  throne  of  Spain,  fled  in 
dismay  from  her  capital  ;  and  this  act  of  peculiarly  unwomanlike  cowardice  told 
heavily  against  her  and  hurried  her  deeply  down  into  that  public  contempt  which 
is  so  fatal  to  sovereigns.  The  Empress  Euge'nie.  on  the  other  hand,  dignified 
and  served  herself  and  her  husband  by  her  fearless  exposure  of  her  own  life  in 
the  cause  of  humanity  and  charity.  Kindly  and  generous  deeds  of  hers  are 
constantly  reported  in  Paris,  and  these  things  go  far  in  keeping  up  the  super- 
stition of  loyalty.  Every  one  knows  how  gracious  and  winning  the  Empress  can 
be  in  her  personal  relations  with  those  who  approach  her.  Sometimes  her  de- 
meanor and. actions  come  into  sharp  contrast  with  those  of  other  sovereigns  in 
matters  less  momentous  than  the  visiting  of  death-charged  hospital  wards.  I 
have  heard  of  an  American  lady  who  once  made  some  rich  and  complete  col- 
lections of  specimens  of  American  foliage,  collected  them  at  immense  labor, 
arranged  them  with  exquisite  taste  in  two  large  and  beautiful  volumes,  and  sent 
one  as  an  offering  to  Queen  Victoria,  the  other  to  the  Empress  of  the  French. 
From  the  British  court  came  back  the  volume  itself,  with  a  formal  reply  from  an 
official  intimating  that  Her  Majesty  the  Queen  made  it  a  rule  not  to  accept  such 
gifts.  From  Paris  came  a  letter  of  genial,  graceful  acceptance,  written  by  the 
Empress  Euge'nie  herself,  full  of  good  taste,  good  feeling,  and  courteous,  lady- 
like expression.  These  are  small  things,  but  womanly  tact  and  grace  seldom 
have  much  opportunity  of  expressing  themselves  save  in  just  such  small  things. 


EUGENIE,  EMPRESS  OF  THE  FRENCH.  31 

The  Empress  then  has  of  late  years  faded  a  little  out  of  political  life.  I 
think  it  may  be  taken  for  granted  that  although  she  is  a  quick,  clever  woman, 
with  talents  far  beyond  the  mere  inventing  of  bonnets  and  petticoats,  she  is 
not  gifted  with  any  political  genius,  not  qualified  to  see  quickly  into  the  heart  of 
a  difficult  question,  not  endowed  with  the  capacity  to  surmount  a  great  crisis.  I 
have  never  heard  anything  which  induces  me  to  think  that  Eugenie's  intellect 
and  power  would  count  for  much  in  the  chances  of  the  dynasty  should  Louis 
Napoleon  die  while  his  son  is  yet  a  boy.  Like  Louis  Napoleon  himself,  she  was 
twice  misjudged  :  first  when  people  set  her  down  as  an  empty-headed  coquette, 
and  next  when  they  cried  her  up  as  a  woman  with  a  genius  for  government.  So 
far  as  one  may  venture  to  predict,  I  think  she  would  not  prove  strong  enough 
for  the  place,  if  evil  fortune  should  throw  upon  her  the  task  of  preserving  the 
throne  for  her  boy. 

Recent  events  seem  to  me  to  prove  that  the  imperial  system  is  less  strong 
and  more  shaky  than  most  of  us  would   have  supposed  six  months  ago.     I  for 
one  do  fully  believe  that  the  recent  disturbances  are  the  genuine  indications  of 
a  profound  and  bitter  popular  discontent.     1  beg  the  readers  of  THE  GALAXY 
to  be  very  cautious  how  they  form  an  estimate  of  the  situation  from  the  corre- 
spondence and  editorial  articles  of  the  London  press.     If  the  "Times"  believes 
Bonapartism  safe  and  strong  in  Paris,  I  have  only  to  remark  that  the  "Times  " 
believed    the   same,  almost   up   to   the   bitter  end.  of  Bonapartism   in  Mexico. 
There  a/e  very  few  London  journals  which  can  be  trusted  where  the  politics  of 
France  are  concerned.     Not  that  the  journals  are  bribed  ;  everybody  knowing 
anything  of  the  London  press  knows  how  absurd  the  idea  of  such  bribery  is  ; 
but   that   all    London    Philistinism  (and    Philistinism  does  a  good  deal  of  the 
•writing  for  the  London  papers)  considers   it  genteel  and  respectable,  and  the 
right  sort  of  thing  generally,  to  go  in  for  the  Empire  and  sneer  at  revolution. 
I   have  read  with  no  little  wonder  many  of  the  comments  of  the   London,  and 
indeed  some  of  the  New  York  journals,  on  Henri  Rochefort  and  his  colleagues. 
One  would   think   that   in    order   to   prove   a  certain  revolutionary  movement 
powerless  and  contemptible,  you  had  only  to  show  that  its  leaders  were  them- 
selves contemptible  and  disreputable  persons.     Some  of  the  journals  here  and 
in  London  write  as  if  the  Empire  must  be  safe  because  the  satire  of  the  "  Lan- 
terne"  and  the  "  Marseillaise"  seems  to  them  coarse  and  witless,  and  because 
they  have  heard  that  Henri  Rochefort  is  an  insincere  man,  of  doubtful  courage 
and  tainted  moral  character.     One  longs  to  ask  whether  the  "  Pere  Duchesne" 
and  the  "Vieux  Cordelier"  were  publications  fit  to  be  read  in  the  drawing-rooms 
of  virtuous  families  ;  whether  Mirabeau's  private  character  was  quite  blameless  ; 
whether  Marat  and  Hebert  had  led  reputable  lives  ;  whether  Camille  Desmou- 
lins  was   habitually  received  into   the  highest  circles  ;  whether  Theroigne  de 
Meiicourt  was  the  sort  of  young  woman  one's  wife  would  like  to  invite  to  tea. 
The  imbecility  with  which  certain  journalists  go  on  day  after  day  trying  to  as- 
sure themselves  and  the  world  that  imperialism  has  nothing  to  fear  at  the  hands 
of  a  movement  led  by  scurrilous  and  disreputable  men,  has  something  in  it  at 
once  amusing  and  provoking.     The  strength  of  a  revolutionary  movement  is  not 
exactly  to  be  estimated  by  the  claims  of  its  leaders  to  carry  off  the  prix  Mon- 
thyon  or  the  Holy  Grail.     Perhaps  if  it  were  to  be  so  estimated,  it  would  be  hard 
to  say  where  the  victory  should  go  in  the  present  instance.     For  the  worst  of 
Rochefort's  colleagues  have  never  been  accused  of  any  profligacies  and  base- 
nesses so  bad  as  those  which  universal  public  opinion  ascribes  to  the  leading 
Bonapartes  and  some  of  their  most  influential  supporters.    Undoubtedly  there  is  a 


32  EUGENIE,  EMPRESS  OF  THE  FRENCH. 

great  deal  of  scurrility  and  even  worse  in  the  papers  conducted  by  Roclrefort. 
It  is  not  in  good  taste  to  go  on  asking  who  was  the  mother  of  De  Morny,  who 
was  the  father  of  Walewski  ;  how  the  present  Walewski,  Walewski  Jlls,  comes 
to  be  called  a  count,  and  who  was  his  mother,  and  so  on  ;  and  the  direct  and 
libellous  attacks  on  the  Empress  are  utterly  indefensible.  If  one  were  making 
up  a  memoir  of  Henri  Rochefort,  or  engaged  in  a  debating  society's  controversy 
on  his  character,  one  would  have  to  a'lmit  that  he  is  by  no  means  a  model  dema- 
gogue, a  pattern  patriot.  But  one  might  at  the  same  time  hint  that,  judging  by 
historical  precedent,  he  is  probably  all  the  more  formidable  as  a  revolutionary 
leader  for  that  very  reason.  His  literary  attacks  on  the  Government  are  by  no 
means  all  vulgar,  or  scurrilous,  or  contemptible.  There  was  fresh  and  genuine 
humor  as  well  as  telling  satire  in  the  "  Lanterne's  "  early  declaration  of  allegi- 
ance to  the  Napoleons,  the  purport  of  which  was  that,  feeling  bound  to  express 
his  devotion  to  a  Napoleon.  Rochefort  had  selected  as  the  object  of  his  loyal 
homage  Napoleon  the  Second,  the  sovereign  who  never  coerced  the  press,  or 
corrupted  the  Senate,  or  robbed  the  nation  of  its  liberty,  or  exiled  its  patriots, 
or  carried  on  a  Mexican  expedition,  or  impoverished  the  country  to  maintain  a 
gigantic  army.  But  there  is  one  thing  certain — thnt  whether  Rochefort  is  witty 
or  not,  wise  or  not,  he  has  waked  an  ecjio  throughout  France  and  Europe  in 
general  which  even  very  wise  and  undeniably  witty  enemies  of  the  Empire  did 
not  succeed  in  creating.  Nothing  he  has  written  will  compare  in  artistic  strength 
of  satire  or  invective  with  Victor  Hugo's  "Chatimens  "  or  "  Napole'on  le  Petit." 
Eugene  Pelletan's  "  Nouvelle  Babylone  "  was  a  prolonged  outpouring  of  indig- 
nant eloquence  by  a  gentleman,  a  scholar,  and  a  thinker.  Rogeard's  "  Prcpos 
de  Labienus"  was  a  piece  of  really  fine  sarcasm.  But  not  the  most  celebrated 
of  these  attacks  on  the  Empire  created  anything  like  the  sensation  which  Roche- 
fort  has  succeeded  in  creating  by  the  constant  "pegging  away  "of  his  bitter, 
envenomed,  and  unscrupulous  pen.  Indeed,  the  reason  is  obvious — at  least  to 
those  who,  like  me,  believe  that  the  great  mass  of  the  Parisian  population  (the 
army,  the  officials,  and  the  priests  not  counted)  are  heartily  sick  of  Bonapartism, 
and  would  get  rid  of  it  if  they  could.  Rochefort  assails  the  Empire  and  tht 
Emperor  in  a  style  which  they  can  understand.  He  is  a  master  of  a  certain 
kind  of  coarse,  rasping  ridicule,  which  delights  the  disaffected  oiivrier;  and  he 
has  no  scruple  about  assailing  any  weak  place  he  can  find  in  his  enemy,  even 
though  in  doing  so  the  heart  of  a  woman  has  likewise  to  be  wounded.  An  an- 
gry and  disaffected  populace  delights  in  this  kind  of  thing.  The  fact  that  Roche- 
fort  has  created  such  a  sensation  is  the  best  proof  in  the  world  that  the  Parisian 
populace  is  angry  and  disaffected.  Rochefort  has  a  happy  gift  of  epithets,  which 
goes  a  long  way  with  admirers  and  followers  such  as  his.  I  doubt  whether  a 
whole  chapter  could  have  described  more  accurately  and  vividly  the  person, 
character,  and  career  of  Prince  Pierre  Bonaparte  than  Rochefort  did  when  he 
branded  him  as  "a  social  bandit."  Personally,  Rochefort  is  not  qualified  to  be 
a  demagogue  in  the  sense  that  Danton  was  a  demagogue,  and  he  can  make  no 
pretension  to  be  a  revolutionary  leader  of  a  high  class.  But  he  can  incite  a 
populace,  madden  the  hearts  of  disaffected  crowds,  as  the  bitter  tongue  of  a 
shrill  woman  might  do,  and  as  the  tongue  of  a  great  orator  might  perhaps  fail  to 
do.  Doubtless  Rochefort  and  his  literary  sword-and-buckler  men  are  not  strong 
enough  to  create  a  serious  disturbance  of  themselves  alone.  But  if  a  moment 
of  general  uncertainty  and  unsettlement  came,  they  might  prove  a  dangerous 
disturbing  force.  If,  for  example,  there  should  come  a  crisis  which  of  itself 
rendered  change  of  some  kind  necessary,  when  all  the  chances  of  the  future 


EUGENIE,  EMPRESS  OF  THE  FRENCH.  33 

might  depend  upon  a  single  hour  or  perhaps  a  single  decisive  command,  and 
when  it  was  not  certain  who  had  the  right,  who  would  assume  the  responsibility 
to  give  the  command,  then  indeed  the  bitter  screams,  and  jeers,  and  invectives 
of  these  reckless  literary  bravos  might  have  much  to  do  with  the  ordering  of 
the  situation.  If,  for  example,  the  Emperor  were  to  die  just  now,  who  shall 
venture  to  say  how  much  the  chances  of  the  Empress  and  her  son  might  not  be 
affected  at  that  moment  of  terrible  crisis  by  the  pens  and  the  tongues  of  Rodie- 
fort  and  his  followers  ? 

Some  time,  in  the  natural  course  of  things,  the  Empress  may  expect  to  have 
to  face  such  a  crisis.  It  is  highly  probable  that  the  time  will  come  while  yet  her 
boy  is  young  and  dependent  upon  her  guardianship  and  care.  Has  she  won 
for  herself  the  affection,  confidence,  and  loyalty  of  France,  to  such  an  extent  that 
she  could  count  upon  national  support  ?  I  am  convinced  that  she  has  not.  She 
is  much  liked  and  even  loved  by  those  who  know  her.  They  have  countless 
anecdotes  to  tell  of  her  affectionate  ways  as  a  mother,  of  her  generosity  and  kind- 
ness as  a  woman.  But  although  she  has  outlived  many  of  the  early  prejudices 
against  her,  she  is  still  regarded  with  distrust  and  dislike  by  the  older  families 
of  France  ;  and  I  am  confident  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  working  classes  in 
Paris  and  the  large  towns  delight  to  believe  the  worst  things  that  malice  and 
slander  can  say  to  her  detriment.  The  priests  and  the  shopkeepers  are  probably 
her  best  friends  ;  but  I  am  not  aware  that  priests  and  shopkeepers  have  ever 
proved  themselves  very  powerful  bulwarks  against  sudden  popular  revolution-" 
The  generals  and  the  army  might  of  course  remain  perfectly  loyal  to  her ;  prob- 
ably would  if  they  had  no  time  to  consider  the  situation,  and  there  were  no  fa- 
vorite rival  in  the  way  (if  Prince  Napoleon,  for  example,  were  a  brilliant  soldier, 
she  would  not  have  a  ghost  of  a  chance  against  him) ;  but  it  must  be  remembered 
that  the  loyalty  of  an  army  is  something  like  the  epigrammatic  description  of  the 
honor  of  a  woman  :  when  there  is  any  deliberation,  it  is  likely  to  be  lost ;  and  the 
claims  of  the  Empress  are  certainly  not  such  as  absolutely  to  forbid  deliberation 
and  render  it  impossible.  Much  of  course  would  depend  on  the  woman  herself. 
There  was  a  moment  when  Catharine  of  Russia's  unfortunate  husband  might 
have  carried  all  before  him  if  he  had  only  seized  the  chance  ;  and  he  did  not 
seize  it,  and  so  lost  all.  There  was  a  moment  when  Catharine  might  have  utterly 
failed  if  she  had  not  risen  to  the  height  of  the  crisis,  and  seized  the  opportunity 
with  both  hands  ;  and  she  did  rise  to  the  height  of  the  crisis,  did  seize  the  op- 
portunity, and  so  won  all.  Place  Eugdnie  in  such  a  position,  and  is  she  a 
woman  to  win  ?  Is  she  in  fact  a  woman  of  genius?  I  think  not.  Nothing  that 
I  have  ever  heard  of  her — and  I  have  known  many  who  were  her  intimate  friends 
— has  led  me  to  believe  her  endowed  with  a  quick,  strong,  commanding  intellect. 
Mentally  she  seems  to  be  narrow  and  shallow  ;  in  temper  she  is  quick,  capri- 
cious, full  of  warm  personal  affections  and  almost  groundless  personal  dislikes. 
I  have  a  strong  idea  that  no  matter  what  the  urgency  of  the  crisis,  she  would  stay 
to  make  herself  picturesque  before  taking  any  public  action;  and  I  venture  to 
think  she  would  be  guided  by  counsel  only  where  she  happened  to  have  a  per- 
sonal liking  for  the  counsellor.  She  cannot,  I  fancy,  be  trusted  at  a  great  crisis 
to  make  the  fortune  of  her  son.  Enough  if  she  do  not  mar  it  at  such  a  time. 

Political  considerations  apart,  one  can  only  wish  her  well.  Her  face  is  one 
which  ought  to  smile  sweetly  and  gracefully  through  history.  If  fate  and  France 
will  endure  the  Bonapartes  for  another  generation  or  so,  there  will  be  some  con- 
solation to  gallant  and  romantic  souls  in  the  thought  that  thereby  this  gracious, 
queenly  woman  will  be  allowed  to  make  a  happy  end  of  her  brilliant,  not  un- 
troubled life.  Thus  far  we  may,  in  summing  up  her  career,  describe  her,  first,  as 


54:          EUGENIE,  EMPRESS  OF  THE  FRENCH. 

a  bright,  vivacious  young  coquette,  with  a  dash  of  the  adventuress  about  her,  rang- 
ing the  world  in  search  of  a  husband  ;  then  a  woman  suddenly  and  surprisingly 
nised  to  the  dazzling  rank  of  an  Empress,  and  a  little  bewildered  by  the  change  ; 
Uien  a  splendid  leader  of  the  world's  fashion,  magnificently  frivolous  and  heed- 
less ;  then  a  political  intrigante,  the  supreme  patroness  of  Ultramontanism  ;  and 
now  a  quiet,  queenly  mother,  verging  toward  that  kind  of  devoteeism  in  which 
some  satirical  person  declares  that  coquetry  in  France  is  sure  to  end.  She  is 
not  a  woman  to  make  any  deep  impression  on  history.  She  has  neither  gifts  enough 
nor  faults  enough.  As  a  politician  she  has  been  a  failure,  and  perhaps  worse 
than  a  failure  ;  but  she  has  been  fortunate  enough  to  escape  from  all  public  respon- 
sibility for  her  mistakes,  and  may  get  quietly  into  history  as  merely  an  intelli- 
gent, good-natured,  and  beautiful  woman.  Posterity  will  probably  see  her  and 
appreciate  her  sufficiently  in  her  portrait  by  Winterhalter :  a  name,  a  vague 
memory,  and  a  smooth  fair  picture  with  bright  complexion,  shining  hair,  and  no- 
ble shoulders,  alone  carrying  down  to  other  times  the  history  of  the  Third 
Napoleon's  wife.  Only  great  misfortunes  could  redeem  her  from  this  destiny  of 
h.ilf  oblivion  ;  and  history  has  names  enough  that  are  burnt  by  misfortune  into 
eternal  memory,  and  may  well  spare  hers.  One  great  claim  she  has  to  a  liberal 
construction  of  her  character:  her  personal  enemies  are  those  who  do  not  know 
her  well  ;  her  intimates  seem  to  be  always  her  friends.  She  has  one  good 
quality,  which  her  husband  with  all  his  faults  likewise  possesses:  she  has  never 
"*tn  her  imperial  splendor  forgotten  or  neglected  or  been  ashamed  of  old  ac- 
quaintances and  friends,  I  have  heard  scores  of  anecdotes  from  people  who 
know  her  well — I  have  heard  one  such  anecdote  since  I  began  writing  this  arti- 
cle— which  prove  her  to  be  entirely  above  the  mean  and  vulgar  weakness  of  the 
parvenu,  who  shrinks  in  her  magnificence  from  any  acquaintanceship  or  asso- 
ciation likely  to  remind  her  of  less  brilliant  days.  Taken  on  the  whole,  the  Em- 
press Euge'nie  is  better  than  her  fortunes  and  her  surroundings  might  have  made 
her.  She  is,  I  think,  a  woman  much  more  deserving  of  respect  than  Josephine 
Beauharnais,  whose  misfortunes,  joined  with  the  quiet  pathetic  dignity  of  her  re- 
lirement  and  her  later  years,  have  made  the  world  forget  the  levities,  frivolities, 
and  follies  of  her  earlier  life.  She  has  shown  a  quicker  and  better  appreciation 
of  the  duties  and  difficulties  of  her  station,  and  the  temper  of  the  people  among 
whom  she  had  to  live,  than  was  at  any  time  shown  by  Marie  Antoinette.  Whether 
she  could  ever  under  the  most  favorable  conditions  prove  an  Anne  of  Austria 
may  well  be  doubted  ;  and  we  must  all  hope  for  her  own  sake  that  she  may  never 
be  put  to  the  proof.  She  has  at  least  made  it  clear  that  she  is  no  mere  Reine 
Crinoline  ;  she  has  shown  that  she  possesses  some  heart,  some  courage,  and 
some  brains  ;  she  has  had  sense  enough  to  retrieve  blunders,  and  merit  enough 
to  live  down  calumny.  The  best  thing  one  can  hope  for  her  is  that  she  may 
never  again  be  placed  in  a  position  which  would  tempt  and  allow  her  to  make 
political  influence  the  instrument  of  religious  bigotry.  The  greatest  woman  her 
•native  country  ever  produced, 'Isabella  of  Castile,  became  with  all  her  virtues 
and  genius  a  curse  to  Spain,  because  of  her  bigotry  and  her  power  ;  and  there 
was  a  time  when  it  seemed  as  if  the  Empress  Eugenie  was  likely  to  make  for 
herself  an  odious  fame  as  the  chief  patroness  of  a  conspiracy  against  the  reli- 
gious and  political  liberties  of  the  south  of  Europe.  Let  us  hope  that  in  her  future 
career  she  may  be  saved  from  any  such  temptation,  and  that  she  may  be  kept  as 
much  as  possible  out  of  all  political  complications  where  religion  interferes  ;  and 
if  she  be  thus  graced  by  fortune,  it  is  all  but  certain  that  whate'ver  her  future 
years  may  bring,  she  will  deserve  and  receive  a  genial  record  in  the  history  of 
•France. 


THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES. 


*  T  T  is  now  sixteen  or  seventeen  years,"  says  Edmund  Burke,  in  that  famous 
passage  to  which  one  is  almost  ashamed  to  allude  any  more,  so  hack- 
neyed has  it  been,  "since  first  I  saw  the  Queen  of  France,  then  the  Dauphiness, 
at  Versailles  ;  and  surely  never  lighted  on  this  orb,  which  she  hardly  seemed  to 
touch,  a  more  delightful  vision."  That  glowing,  impassioned  apostrophe  did 
more  to  make  partisans  and  admirers  for  poor  Marie  Antoinette  among  all  Eng- 
lish-speaking peoples,  probably  for  all  time,  than  any  charms,  or  virtues,  or  mis- 
fortunes of  the  Queen  and  the  woman  could  have  done.  I  can  never  of  late  read 
or  recall  to  mind  the  burning  words  of  Burke,  without  thinking  of  a  certain  day 
in  March  some  seven  years  ago,  when  I  stood  on  a  platform  in  Trafalgar  Square. 
London,  and  saw  a  bright,  beautiful  young  face  smiling  and  bending  to  a  vast 
enthusiastic  crowd  on  either  side,  and  I,  like  everybody  else,  was  literally  strick- 
en with  admiration  of  the  beauty,  the  sweetness,  and  the  grace  of  the  Princess 
Alexandra  of  Denmark.  In  truth,  I  am  not  in  general  an  enthusiast  about  prin- 
ces or  princesses  ;  I  do  not  believe  that  the  king's  face  usually  gives  grace.  In 
this  instance  the  beauty  of  the  Princess  Alexandra  had  been  so  noisily  trumpeted 
by  literary  lacqueys  already,  that  one's  natural  instinct  was  to  feel  disappointed, 
and  to  say  so,  when  the  Princess  herself  came  in  sight.  But  it  was  impossible 
to  feel  disappointment,  or  anything  but  admiration,  at  the  sight  of  that  bright,  fair 
face,  so  transparent  in  the  clearness  of  its  complexion,  so  delicate  and  refined  in 
its  outlines,  so  sweet  and  gracious  in  its  expression.  I  think  something  like 
the  old-fashioned,  chivalric,  chimerical  feeling  of  personal  loyalty  must  have 
flamed  up  for  the  moment  that  day  in  the  hearts  of  many  men,  who  perhaps 
would  have  been  ashamed  to  confess  that  their  first  experience  of  such  an  emo- 
tion was  due  to  a  passing  glimpse  of  the  face  of  a  pretty,  tremulous  girl. 

If  ours  were  days  of  augury,  men  might  have  shuddered  at  the  omens'  which 
accompanied  the  wedding  ceremonies  of  the  Prince  and  Princess  of  Wales. 
When  Goethe,  then  a  youth,  surveyed  the  preparations  for  the  reception  of 
Marie  Antoinette  at  Strasbourg,  on  her  way  to  Paris,  he  observed  significantly  on 
the  inauspicious  fact  that  in  the  grand  chamber  adorned  for  her  coming,  the 
tapestry  represented  the  wedding  of  Jason  and  Medea.  The  civil  authorities 
nf  London  certainly  did  not  greet  the  fair  stranger  with  any  such  grisly  and 
ghastly  emblazonings  ;  but  there  were  other  and  even  more  inauspicious  omens 
offered  by  chance  and  the  hour.  The  sky  darkened,  a  dreary  wind  whistled  ; 
presently  the  rain  came  down  in  drenching  streams  that  would  not  abate.  There 
was  a  mourning-garb  at  the  wedding — the  black  dress  of  the  Queen,  who  would 
not  lay  aside  her  widow's-weeds  even  for  that  hour  ;  and  the  night  of  the  weoi- 
(iing,  when  the  streets  of  London  were  illuminated,  the  crowd  was  so  great  that, 
as  on  a  memorable  occasion  in  the  early  married  life  of  Marie  Antoinette,  peo- 
ple were  crushed  and  trampled  to  death  amid  the  universal  jubilation. 

Well,  we  defy  augury,  with  Hamlet.  But  I  think  some  at  least  in  the  crowd 
who  welcomed  Alexandra  felt  a  kind  of  doubt  and  pity  as  to  her  future,  which 
needed  no  inspiration  from  omens  and  superstition.  No  foreign  princess  has 
ever  been  so  popular  in  England  as  Alexandra  ;  and  assuredly  some  at  least  of 
the  affection  felt  for  her  springs  from  a  pity  which,  whether  called  for  or  not,  is 
genuine  and  universal.  The  last  time  1  saw  the  Princess  of  Wales  was  within 


36  THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES. 

a  very  few  days  of  my  leaving  England  to  visit  the  United  States.  It  w^s  in 
Drury  Lane  Theatre,  then  fitted  up  as  an  opera  house  in  consequence  of  the  re- 
cent burning  of  Her  Majesty's  Theatre.  The  Prince  of  Wales,  his  wife,  and  one 
of  his  sisters  were  in  their  box.  I  had  not  seen  the  Princess  for  some  time,  and 
I  was  painfully  impressed  with  the  change  which  had  come  over  her.  Remem- 
bering, as  it  was  easy  to  do,  the  brightness  of  her  beauty  during  the  early  days 
of  her  marriage,  there  was  something  almost  shocking  in  the  altered  appearance 
of  her  face.  It  looked  wasted  and  haggard  ;  the  complexion,  which  used  to  be 
so  dazzlingly  fair,  had  grown  dull,  and,  if  I  may  say  so,  discolored  ;  and  I  must 
be  ungracious  enough  to  declare  bluntly  that,  to  my  eyes  at  least,  there  seemed 
little  trace  indeed  of  the  beauty  of  a  few  years  before  left  in  that  dimmed  and 
worn  countenance.  "  Only  the  eyes  remained — they  would  not  go."  Of  course, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  the  Princess  was  then  only  just  recovering  from  a 
long,  painful,  and  exhausting  illness  ;  and  she  may  have — I  truly  hope  she 
has — since  then  regained  all  her  brightness  and  beauty.  In  any  case,  it 
would  be  unjust  indeed  to  assume  that  the  wasted  look  of  the  Princess  was  to 
be  attributed  to  domestic  unhappiness.  But  even  a  very  matter-of-fact  and  un- 
sentimental person,  looking  at  her  then,  and  remembering  what  she  so  lately  was, 
might  be  excused  if  he  fancied  that  some  of  the  unpropitious  omens  which  sur- 
rounded the  Princess's  marriage  had  already  begun  to  justify  themselves  in  prac- 
tical fulfilment. 

For  even  at  the  time  of  the  marriage  of  the  Prince  and  Princess  there  were 
not  wanting  prophets  of  evil  who  predicted  that  this  royal  union  would  not  prove 
much  happier  than  state-made  marriages  commonly  are.  Even  then  there  were 
stories  and  reports  afloat  which  ascribed  to  the  Prince  habits  and  tendencies  not 
likely  to  promote  the  domestic  happiness  of  a  delicate  and  refined  young  wife, 
hardly  more  than  a  mere  child  in  years.  Indeed,  there  was  already  considerable 
doubt  in  the  public  mind  as  to  the  personal  character  of  the  Prince  of  Wales. 
He  certainly  did  not  look  a  very  intellectual  or  refined  sort  of  person  even  then, 
and  some  at  least  were  inclined  to  think  him,  as  Steerforth  says  of  little  Em'ly's 
lover,  "rather  a  chuckle-headed  kind  of  fellow,"  to  get  such  a  girl.  There  was, 
certainly,  a  breath  of  serious  distrust  abroad.  On  the  Prince's  coming  of  age, 
and  again.  I  think,  on  the  announcement  of  his  approaching  marriage,  the  Lon- 
don daily  papers  had  set  themselves  to  preaching  sermons  at  him  ;  and  a  very 
foolish  chorus  of  sermons  that  was  which  broke  out  from  all  those  tongues  to- 
gether. The  only  marked  effect  of  this  outburst  of  lay-preaching  was,  I  fancy, 
to  impress  the  public  mind  with  the  idea  that  the  Prince  was  really  a  very  much 
more  dreadful  young  man  than  there  was  any  good  reason  to  believe  him. 
People  naturally  imagined  that  the  writers  who  poured  forth  such  eloquent,  wise, 
and  suggestive  admonitions  must  know  a  great  deal  more  than  they  felt  disposed 
to  hint  at ;  whereas,  I  venture  to  think  that,  in  truth,  the  majority  of  the  writers 
were  disposed  to  hint  at  a  great  deal  more  than  they  knew.  For,  indeed,  almost 
all  that  is  generally  and  substantially  known  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  has  been 
learned  and  observed  since  his  marriage. 

Still,  even  before,  and  long  before  the  marriage,  there  were  ominous  rumors. 
Those  that  I  mention  I  give  simply  as  rumors — not,  indeed,  the  mere  babble  of  the 
streets,  but  as  the  kind  of  thing  which  people  told  you  who  professed  to  know — 
the  talk  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  the  clubs,  and  the  fashionable  drawing- 
rooms  and  smoking-rooms.  People  told  you  that  the  Prince  and  his  father  had 
had  many  quarrels  arising  out  of  the  extravagance,  dissipation,  and  wrong-head- 
edness  of  the  former  ;  and  there  was  even  a  painful  and  cruel  report  thus 


THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES  87 

whispered  about  that  the  death  of  Prince  Albert  was  the  result  of  a  cold  he  had 
taken  from  walking  incautiously  in  a  heavy  rain  during  excitement  caused  by  a 
quarrel  with  his  son.  Stories  were  told  of  this  and  that  amour  and  liaison  in 
Ireland  when  the  Prince  of  Wales  was  with  the  camp  on  the  Curragh  of  Kil- 
dare  ;  of  his  excesses  when  he  was  a  student  at  the  University;  of  his  escapades 
at  many  other  times  and  places.  Certain  actresses  of  a  low  class,  and  other 
women  of  a  still  lower  class,  were  pointed  out  in  London  as  special  favorites  of 
the  Pi  in<^  of  Wales.  Of  course  every  man  of  sense  knew,  first,  that  stories  of 
this  kind  must  be  taken  with  a  large  amount  of  allowance  for  exaggeration*;  and, 
next,  that  the  public  must  not  expect  all  the  virtues  of  a  saint  to  belong  to  the 
early  years  of  a  prince  of  the  family  of  Guelph.  In  England  public  opinion, 
although  it  has  grown  much  more  exacting  of  late  years  on  the  score  of  decorum 
than  it  used  to  be,  is  still  disposed  to  look  over  without  censure  a  good  deal  of 
extravagance  and  dissipation  in  young  and  unmarried  men,  especially  if  they  be 
men  of  rank.  Therefore,  if  the  rumors  which  attended  the  early  career  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales  had  not  followed  him  into  his  married  years,  the  world  would 
soon  ha"e  forgotten  all  about  his  youthful  indiscretions.  But  it  became  a  serious 
question  lor  the  whole  nation  when  it  began  to  be  whispered  everywhere  that 
the  Prince  was  growing  worse  instead  of  better  during  his  married  life,  and 
when  to  the  suspicion  that  he  was  wasting  his  own  youth  and  his  own  credit 
came  to  be  added  the  belief  that  he  was  neglecting  and  injuring  the  young  and 
beautiful  woman  whom  state  reasons  had  assigned  to  him  as  a  wife.  In  good 
truth,  it  is  really  a  question  of  public  and  historical  interest  whether  the  Queen 
of  England  is  likely  to  be  succeeded  by  an  Albert  the  Good  or  another  George 
the  Fourth  ;  and  I  am  not  therefore  inviting  the  readers  of  THE  GALAXY  to  de- 
scend to  the  useless  discussion  of  a  mere  piece  of  idle  court  scandal  when  I  ask 
them  to  consider  with  me  the  probabilities  of  the  future  from  such  survey  as  we 
can  take  of  the  aspects  of  the  present. 

Those  who  saw  the  Prince  of  Wales  when  he  visited  this  country,  would 
surely  fail  to  recognize  the  slender,  fair-haired,  rather  graceful  youth  of  that  day 
in  the  heavy,  fat,  stolid,  prematurely  bald,  elderly-young-man  of  this.  It  would 
not  be  easy  to  see  in  any  assembly  a  more  stupid-looking  man  than  the  Prince 
of  Wales  is  now.  On  horseback  he  shows  to  best  advantage.  He  rides  well, 
and  the  pleasure  he  takes  in  riding  lends  something  of  animation  to  his  usually 
inexpressis-e  face.  But  when  his  eyes  and  features  lapse  into  their  habitual  con- 
dition of  indolent,  good-natured,  stolid  repose,  all  light  of  intellect  seems  to  have 
been  banished.  The  outline  of  the  head  and  face,  and  the  general  expression, 
seemed  to  me  of  late  to  be  growing  every  day  more  and  more  like  the  head  and 
f.ice  of  George  the  Third.  Anybody  who  may  happen  to  have  a  shilling  or  half- 
crown  of  George  the  Third's  time,  can  see  on  the  coin  a  very  fair  presentment 
of  the  countenance  of  the  present  heir-apparent  of  the  English  throne. 
Whether  the  Prince  of  Wales  resembles  George  the  Fourth  in  character  and 
tastes  or  not,  he  certainly  does  not  resemble  him  in  face.  Even  a  court  syco- 
phant could  not  pretend  to  see  beauty  or  grace  in  our  present  Prince. 

I  think  that  to  the  eye  of  the  cynic  or  the  satirist  the  Prince  of  Wales  shows 
to  greatest  advantage  when  he  sits  in  his  box  at  an  advanced  hour  of  some 
rather  heavy  classic  opera,  or  has  to  endure  a  long  succession  of  speeches  at  a 
formal  public  dinner.  The  heavy  head  droops,  the  heavy  jaws  hang,  the  languid 
eyes  close,  the  heir-apparent  sinks  into  a  doze.  Loyalty  itself  can  see  nothing 
dignified  or  kingly  in  him  then.  I  have  watched  him  thus  as  he  sat  in  his  box 
during  some  high-class,  and  to  him,  doubtless,  very  heavy  performance  at  the 

432560 


88  THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES. 

Italian  opera,  and  have  thought  that  at  times  he  might  remind  irreverent  and 
disloyal  observers  of  Pickwick's  immortal  fat  boy.  I  have  sometimes  observed 
that  his  little  dozes  appeared  to  afford  innocent  amusement  to  his  sisters,  if  any 
of  them  happened  to  be  in  the  box;  and  occasionally  one  of  the  Princesses 
would  playfully  poke  her  slumbering  brother  in  the  princely  ribs,  and  the  Heir 
of  all  the  Ages  would  open  his  eyes  and  smile  languidly,  and  try  to  look  at  the 
stage  and  listen  to  the  music  ;  and  then,  after  a  while,  the  heavy  head  would  sink 
once  more  on  the  vast  expanse  of  shirt-front  in  which  the  Prince  seeuis  to  de- 
light, and  the  fat  boy  would  go  to  sleep  again.  But  this  would  only  happen  at  cer- 
tain performances.  There  were  times  when  the  Prince  had  eyes  and  ears  open 
and  attentive,  even  in  the  opera  house.  His  tastes  in  general,  however,  are  not  for 
high  art  in  music  or  the  drama.  He  is  very  fond  of  the  little  theatres  where  the 
vivacious  blondes  display  their  unconcealed  attractions.  There  are,  as  every- 
body knows,  several  minor  theatres  in  London  where  the  audience,  or,  I  should 
say  more  properly,  the  spectators,  will  be  found  to  consist  chiefly  of  men,  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  performers  are  chiefly  women.  These  are  the  temples  of 
the  leg  drama.  "  Piece  aux  jambes  ?  Ptice  aux cuisses  !  "  indignantly  exclaims 
Eugene  Pelletan,  denouncing  such  performances  in  his  "Nouvelle  Babylone  "  ; 
and  he  goes  on  to  add  some  cumulative  illustrations  which  I  omit.  Well,  the 
Prince  of  Wales  loves  the  pttce  aux  jambes,  and  the  theatres  where  it  flourishes. 
He  constantly  visits  theatres  at  which  his  wife  and  sisters  are  never  seen,  and  in 
which  it  would  be  idle  to  deny  that  there  are  actresses  who  have  made  them- 
selves conspicuous  objects  of  popular  scandal. 

Now,  I  am  far  from  saying  that  this  necessarily  implies  anything  worse  than 
a  low  taste  on  the  part  of  the  Prince  of  Wales.  But  there  are  stations  in  life 
which  render  private  bad  taste  a  public  sin.  In  London,  of  late,  there  has  been 
a  just  outcry  against  a  certain  kind  of  theatrical  performance.  It  is  held  to  be 
demoralizing  and  degrading  that  the  stage  should  be  made  simply  a  show-place 
for  the  exhibition  of  half-naked  women,  for  the  audacious  display  of  legs  and 
bosoms.  Now,  I  beg  to  say  for  myself  that  I  have  entire  faith  in  the  dramatic 
as  in  every  other  art  ;  that  I  believe  it  always  when  truthfully  pursued  vindicates 
itself,  and  that  I  think  any  costume  which  the  true  and  legitimate  needs  of  the 
drama  require  is  fitting,  proper,  and  modest.  I  regard  the  ballet,  in  its  place,  as 
a  graceful  and  delightful  entertainment  ;  and  I  do  not  believe  that  any  healthy 
and  pure  mind  ought  to  be  offended  by  the  kind  of  costume  which  the  dance  re- 
quires. But  artists  and  moralists  in  London  alike  objected,  and  justly  objected, 
to  performances  the  whole  purpose,  and  business,  and  attraction  of  which  was 
the  exhibition  of  a  crowd  of  girls  as  nearly  naked  as  they  could  venture  to  show 
themselves  in  public. 

Now  this  was  undoubtedly  the  kind  of  exhibition  which  the  Prince  of  Wales 
especially  favored  and  patronized.  Night  after  night,  even  during  the  long  and 
lamentable  illness  of  his  young  wife,  he  visited  such  theatres,  and  gazed  upon 
"those  prodigies  of  myriad  nakednesses."  Likewise  did  he  much  delight  in  the 
performances  of  Schneider— that  high  priestess  of  the  obscene,  rich  with  the 
spoils  of  princes.  I  say  emphatically  that  there  were  actions,  gestures,  bouffon- 
neries  performed  amid  peals  of  laughter  and  thunders  of  applause  by  this  fat 
Faustina  in  the  St.  James's  Theatre,  London,  which  were  only  fit  to  have  glad- 
dened the  revels  of  Sodom  and  Gomorrah.  And  this  woman  was,  artistically  at 
.east,  the  prime  favorite  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  ;  and  when  his  brother,  the  Duke 
of  Edinburgh,  reached  England  for  the  first  time  after  his  escape  from  the  Fe- 
nian bullet  in  Sydney,  the  par  nobile  fratrum  celebrated  the  auspicious  event  by 


THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES.  39 

hastening  to  the  theatre  where  Schneider  kicked  and  wriggled  and  helped  out 
the  point  of  lascivious  songs  by  a  running  accompaniment  of  obscene  gestures. 

So  much  at  least  has  to  be  said  against  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  cannot  be 
gainsaid.  All  that  he  could  do  by  countenance  and  patronage  to  encourage  a 
debauching  and  degrading  style  of  theatric  entertainment,  he  has  done.  He  is 
said  to  be  fond  of  the  singing  of  the  vulgar  and  low  buffoons  of  the  music-halls, 
and  to  have  had  such  persons  brought  specially  to  his  residence,  MarlborougU 
House,  to  sing  for  him.  I  have  been  assured  of  this  often  by  persons  who  pro- 
fessed to  know  ;  but  I  do  not  know  anything  of  it  myself,  nor  is  it  indeed  a  mat- 
ter of  any  importance.  The  other  facts  are  known  to  everybody  who  reads  the 
London  papers.  The  manager  or  manageress  of  a  theatre  takes  good  care  to  an- 
nounce in  the  journals  when  a  visit  from  the  Prince  of  Wales  has  taken  place, 
and  we  all  thus  come  to  know  how  many  times  a  week  the  little  theatric  temples 
of  nakedness  have  been  honored  by  his  presence. 

Am  I  attaching  too  much  importance  to  such  matters  as  this  ?  I  think  not. 
The  social  influence  and  moral  example  of  a  royal  personage  in  England  are  now 
almost  the  only  agencies  by  which  the  royal  personage  can  affect  us  for  good  or 
evil.  I  hold  that  no  man  thoughtful  or  prudent  enough,  no  matter  what  his 
morals,  to  be  fit  to  occupy  the  position  assigned  to  the  Prince  of  Wales,  would 
be  guilty  of  lending  his  public  and  constant  patronage  to  such  exhibitions  and 
amusements  as  those  which  he  especially  patronizes.  Moreover,  the  Prince  h.is 
often  shown  a  disregard,  either  cynical  or  stupid — probably  the  latter — for  public 
opinion,  a  heedlessness  of  public  scandal,  in  other  matters  as  well.  He  has  made 
(Companionship  for  himself  among  young  noblemen  conspicuous  for  their  debauch- 
ery. At  a  time,  not  very  long  ago,  when  the  Divorce  Court  was  occupied  with 
the  hearing  of  a  scandalous  cause,  in  which  a  certain  young  duke  figured  most 
prominently  and  disgracefully,  this  young  duke  was  daily  and  nightly  to  be  seen 
the  close  companion  of  the  Prince  of  Wales. 

Let  me  touch  upon  another  subject,  of  a  somewhat  delicate  nature.  I  have 
said  that  there  were  times  when  our  Prince  was  always  wide  awake  at  the  opera 
house.  There  is  a  certain  brilliant  and  capricious  little  singer  whom  all  England 
and  Germany  much  admire,  and  who  in  certain  operatic  parts  has,  I  think,  no 
rival.  Now,  public  scandal  said  that  the  Prince  of  Wales  greatly  admired  this 
lady,  and  paid  her  the  most  marked  attentions.  Public  scandal,  indeed,  said  a 
great  deal  more.  I  hasten  to  record  my  conviction  that,  so  far  as  the  fair  artiste 
was  concerned,  the  scandal  was  wholly  unfounded,  and  that  she  is  a  woman  of  pure 
character  and  honor.  But  the  Prince  was  credited  with  a  special  admiration  for 
her;  and  I  am  sure  the  Prince's  father  under  such  circumstances  would  ha\e 
taken  good  care  to  lend  no  foundation,  afford  no  excuse,  for  scandal  to  rest  upon. 
Now,  I  speak  of  what  I  have  myself  observed  when  I  say  that  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  whenever  he  had  an  opportunity,  always  demeaned  himself  as  if  he  really 
desired  to  give  the  public  good  reason  for  believing  the  scandal,  or  as  if  he  was 
too  far  gone  in  infatuation  to  be  able  to  govern  his  actions.  For  he  was  always 
at  the  opera  when  this  lady  sang ;  and  he  always  conducted  himself  as  if  he 
wished  to  blazon  to  the  world  his  ostentatious  and  demonstrative  admiration. 
When  the  prima  donna  went  off  the  stage,  the  Prince  disappeared  from  his  box; 
when  she  came  on  the  stage  again,  he  returned  to  his  seat ;  he  lingered  behind 
all  his  party  at  the  end,  that  he  might  give  the  last  note  of  applause  to  the  dis- 
appearing singer;  he  made  a  more  pertinacious  show  of  his  enthusiasm  than 
even  the  military  admirer  of  Miss  Snevellicci  was  accustomed  to  do.  Now,  all 
this  may  have  been  only  stolidity  or  silliness,  and  may  not  have  denoted  any- 


40  THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES. 

thing  like  cynicism  or  coarse  disdain  of  public  opinion  ;  but  whatever  it  indicated, 
it  certainly  did  not,  I  think,  testify  to  the  existence  of  qualities  likely  to  be  found 
admirable  or  desirable  in  the  heir  to  a  throne. 

Of  the  truth  or  falsehood  of  the  private  scandals  in  general  circulation  con- 
cerning the  Prince  of  Wales  I  know  nothing  whatever.  But  everybody  in  Eng- 
land is  aware  that  such  stories  are  told,  and  can  name  and  point  out  this  or  that 
titled  lady  as  the  heroine  of  each  particular  story.  It  need  hardly  be  said  that 
when  a  man  acquires  the  sort  of  reputation  which  attaches  to  the  Prince  of 
\Vales,  nothing  could  be  more  unjust  or  unreasonable  than  to  accept,  without 
some  very  strong  ground  of  belief,  any  story  which  couples  his  name  with  that 
of  any  woman  belonging  to  the  society  in  which  he  moves.  Obviously,  it  would 
be  enough,  in  the  eyes  of  an  English  crowd,  that  the  Prince  should  now  pay  any 
friendly  attention  to  any  handsome  duchess  or  countess  in  order  to  convert  her 
into  an  object  of  scandal.  I  am  myself  morally  convinced  that  some  of  the  titled 
Luiies  who  are  broadly  and  persistently  set  down  by  British  gossip  as  mistresses 
of  the  Prince  of  Wales  are  as  innocent  of  such  a  charge  as  if  they  had  never 
been  within  a  thousand  miles  of  a  court.  But  the  Prince  is  a  little  unlucky  wher- 
ever he  goes,  for  scandal  appears  to  pursue  him  as  Horace's  black  care  follows 
the  horseman.  When  the  Prince  of  Wales  happens  to  be  in  Paris,  he  seems  to 
be  surrounded  at  once  by  the  same  atmosphere  of  suspicion  and  evil  report. 
Some  two  years  ago  I  chanced  to  be  in  Paris  at  the  time  the  Prince  was  there, 
and  I  can  answer  for  it  that  observers  who  had  never  heard  or  read  of  the  com- 
mon gossip  of  London  formed  the  same  impression  of  his  general  character  that 
the  public  of  London  had  already  adopted.  The  Prince  was  then  paying  special 
attention  to  a  brilliant  and  beautiful  lady  moving  in  the  court  circles  of  the  French 
capital,  a  lady  who  had  but  very  recently  distinguished  herself  by  appearing  at  one 
of  the  fancy  balls  of  the  Tuileries  in  the  character  of  the  Archangel  Michael  or 
Raphael — it  does  not  much  matter  which — and  attired  in  a  costume  which  left 
the  company  no  possibility  of  doubting  the  symmetry  of  her  limbs  and  the  gen- 
eral shapeliness  of  her  person.  Malicious  satirists  circulated  thereupon  an  an- 
nouncement that  the  lady  was  to  appear  at  the  next  fancy  ball  as  "La  Source," 
the  beautiful  naked  nymph  so  exquisitely  painted  by  Ingres.  This  lady  rece'ved 
the  special  attentions  of  the  Prince  of  Wales.  He  followed  her,  people  said, 
like  her  shadow;  and  a  smart  pun  was  soon  in  circulation,  which  I  refrain  from 
giving  because  it  contrives  ingeniously  to  blend  with  his  name  the  name  of  the 
lady  in  question,  and  I  am  not  writing  a  scandalous  chronicle.  This  was  the 
tiiYie  when  the  Prince  made  his  royal  mother  so  very  angry  by  attending  the 
Chantilly  races  on  a  Sunday.  When  he  came  back  to  London  he  had  to  take 
part  in  some  public  ceremonial — I  forget  now  what  it  was — at  which  the  Queen 
had  consented  to  be  present.  Her  Majesty  was  present,  and  I  have  been  assured 
by  a  friend  who  stood  quite  near  that  a  sort  of  little  scene  was  enacted  which 
much  embarrassed  those  who  had  to  take  part  in  the  official  pageantry  of  the 
occasion.  Up  came  the  Prince,  who  had  travelled  in  hot  haste  from  Paris,  and 
with  a  somewhat  abashed  and  sheepish  air  approached  his  royal  mother.  She 
looked  at  him  angrily,  and  turned  away.  The  Duke  of  Cambridge,  her  cousin, 
made  an  awkward  effort  to  mend  matters  by  bringing  up  the  Prince  again,  and 
with  the  action  of  a  friendly  and  deprecating  intercessor  presenting  the  delin- 
quent. This  time,  I  am  assured,  the  Queen,  with  determined  and  angry  gestures, 
and  some  words  spoken  in  a  low  tone,  repelled  intercessor  and  offender  at  once ; 
and  the  Prince  of  Wales  retired  before  the  threatened  storm.  The  Duke  of 
Edinburgh,  who  had  been  lingering  a  little  in  the  background — he,  too,  had  just 


THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES.  41 

come  from  Paris,  and  he  had  been  to  Chantilly — anxious  to  see  what  kind  of  re- 
ception would  be  accorded  to  his  brother,  thought,  apparently,  that  he  had  seen 
enough  to  warrant  him  in  keeping  himself  at  a  modest  distance  on  that  occasion, 
and  not  encountering  the  terrors  of  what  Thackeray,  in  "The  Rose  and  the 
Ring,"  describes  as  ''the  royal  eye." 

I  have  little  doubt  that  Queen  Victoria  is  a  somewhat  rigorous  and  exacting 
mother,  and  I  should  be  far  from  accepting  her  frown  as  decisive  with  regard  to 
the  delinquencies  of  one  of  her  sons.  Cigar-smoking  alone  would  probably  be 
accounted  by  the  Queen  a  sin  hardly  allowing  of  pardon.  Her  husband,  Prince 
Albert,  was  a  man  so  pure  of  life,  so  free  from  nearly  all  the  positive  errors  of 
manhood,  so  remarkably  endowed  with  at  least  all  the  negative  virtues,  that  his 
companionship  might  easily  have  spoiled  her  for  the  toleration  of  natures  less 
calm  and  orderly.  I  suspect  that  the  Queen  is  one  of  that  class  of  thoroughly 
good  women  who,  from  mere  lack  of  wide  sympathies  and  genial  toleration,  are 
not  qualified  to  deal  to  the  best  advantage  with  children  who  show  a  little  incli- 
nation for  irregularity  and  self-indulgence.  Nor  do  I  believe  that  the  Prince  of 
Wales  is  the  wicked  and  brutal  profligate  that  common  libel  makes  him  out. 
The  shocking  story  which  one  sees  so  often  alluded  to  in  the  London  corre- 
spondence of  certain  American  papers,  and  which  attributes  the  long  illness  of 
the  Princess  of  Wales  to  the  misconduct  of  her  husband,  I  believe  to  be  utterly 
unfounded  and  unjustifiable.  One  of  the  London  medical  journals,  the  "  Lancet " 
I  think  it  was,  had  the  courage  to  refer  directly  to  this  monstrous  statement,  and 
to  give  it  an  emphatic  and  authoritative  refutation.  If  the  worst  things  said  of 
the  Prince  of  Wales  with  any  appearance  of  foundation  were  true,  it  is  certain 
that  he  would  still  not  be  any  worse  than  many  other  European  princes  and 
sovereigns.  I  have  never  heard  anything  said  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  half  so 
bad  as  the  stones  which  are  believed  everywhere  in  Paris  of  the  enormous  profli- 
gacies of  Prince  Napoleon  ;  and  it  would  be  hardly  possible  for  charity  itself  to 
doubt  that  up  to  a  very  recent  period  the  private  life  of  the  Emperor  of  the 
French  himself  was  stained  with  frequent  and  reckless  dissipation.  Those  who 
were  in  Vienna  anywhere  about  the  autumn  of  1866,  will  remember  the  stories 
which  were  told  about  the  fatal  results  of  the  exalted  military  command  given  by 
the  imperial  will  to  certain  favored  generals,  and  the  kind  of  influence  by  which 
those  generals  had  acquired  imperial  favor.  Common  report  certainly  describes 
the  Empress  of  Austria  as  being  no  happier  in  her  domestic  relations  than  the 
Princess  of  Wales.  Everybody  knows  what  Victor  EmanuePs  private  char- 
acter is,  and  what  sort  of  hopeful  youth  is  his  eldest  son,  L^mberto.  Therefore, 
the  Prince  of  Wales  could  doubtless  plead  that  he  is  no  worse  than  his  neigh- 
bors ;  and  even  in  his  own  family  he  might  point  to  other  members  no  better 
than  himself.  The  Duke  of  Cambridge,  for  instance,  has  often  been  accused  of 
profligacy  and  profligate  favoritism.  I  wish  I  could  venture  to  repeat  here,  for 
the  sake  of  the  genuine  wit  and  keen  satire  of  it,  a  certain  epigram  in  Latin, 
composed  by  an  English  military  officer,  to  describe  the  influence  which  brought 
about  the  sudden  and  remarkable  promotion  of  another  officer  who  was  not  be- 
lieved to  be  personally  quite  deserving  of  the  rank  conferred  on  him  by  the 
Duke  of  Cambridge,  commander-in-chief  of  the  British  army.  But  the  position 
cf  the  Prince  of  Wales  is  very  different  from  that  of  the  Duke  of  Cambridge, 
and  he  has  to  face  a  public  opinion  quite  unlike  that  which  surrounds  Prince  Na- 
poleon or  the  Emperor  of  the  French.  People  in  France  are  not  inclined  to 
make  any  very  serious  complaint  about  the  amours  of  a  prince,  or  even  of  an 
emjieror.  I  do  not  venture  to  say  that  there  is  much  more  of  actual  immorality 


42  THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES. 

in  Paris  than  in  London  ;  but,  assuredly,  a  man  may,  without  harm  to  his  pub- 
lic and  political  influence,  acknowledge  an  amount  of  immorality  in  Paris  which 
would  be  utterly  fatal  to  his  credit  and  reputation  in  London.  Moreover,  some 
of  the  illustrious  profligates  I  have  mentioned  are  distinguished  by  other  quali- 
ties as  well  as  profligacy;  but  I  cannot  say  that  I  have  ever  heard  any  positively 
good  quality,  either  of  heart  or  intellect,  ascribed  to  the  Prince  of  Wales. 

Unless  his  face,  his  head,  his  manners  in  public,  and  the  tastes  he  so  con- 
spicuously manifests  wholly  belie  him,  the  heir  to  the  British  throne  is  a  remark- 
ably dull  young  man.  He  cannot  even  deliver  with  any  decent  imitation  of 
intelligence  the  little  speeches  which  Arthur  Helps  or  somebody  else  usually  gels 
up  for  him  when  the  exigencies  of  the  situation  compel  the  Prince  to  make  a 
speech  in  public.  He  is  reputed  to  be  parsimonious  even  in  his  pleasures,  and 
has  managed  to  get  himself  deeply  into  debt  without  being  supposed  to  have 
wasted  any  of  his  substance  in  obedience  to  a  generous  impulse.  The  Prince 
inherited  a  splendid  property.  His  prudent  father  had  looked  well  after  the  rev- 
enues of  the  duchy  of  Cornwall,  which  is  the  appanage  of  the  Prince  of  Wales 
(even  in  some  very  dingy  parts  of  London  you  may  if  you  hire  a  house  find  that 
)'ou  have  the  Prince  of  Wales  for  a  landlord),  and  the  property  of  the  heir  must 
have  been  raised  to  its  very  highest  value.  Yet  it  is  notorious  that  a  very  few 
years  after  he  had  attained  his  majority,  Albert  Edward  had  contrived  to  get 
deeply  immersed  in  debt.  There  was  for  some  time  a  scheme  in  contemplation 
to  apply  to  Parliament  for  an  addition  to  the  huge  allowance  made  to  the  Prince 
of  Wales  ;  and  the  "Times  "  and  other  newspapers  were  always  urging  the  fact 
that  the  Queen  left  the  Prince  to  perform  nearly  all  her  social  duties  for  her,  as 
a  reason  why  the  nation  ought  to  award  him  an  augmented  income.  It  puzzles 
people  in  London,  who  read  the  papers  and  who  study,  as  most  Britons  do,  the 
occupations  and  pastimes  of  royalty,  to  know  where  the  lavish  and  regal  hospi- 
talities take  place  which  the  Prince  of  Wales  is  supposed  to  dispense  on  behalf 
of  his  mother.  However,  the  project  for  appealing  to  the  generosity  of  Parlia- 
ment seems  to  have  been  put  aside  or  to  have  fallen  through — I  have  read  some- 
where that  the  Queen  herself  has  agreed  to  increase  her  son's  allowance  out  of 
her  own  ample  and  well-hoarded  purse — and  the  English  public  are  not  like.'y  to 
be  treated  to  any  Parliamentary  debate  on  the  subject  just  yet.  But  this  mucli 
is  certain,  that  the  same  almost  universal  rumor  which  attributes  coarse  and  dis- 
sipated habits  to  the  Prince  of  Wales  attributes  to  him  likewise  a  mean  and 
stingy  parsimony  where  aught  save  his  own  pleasure  is  concerned  ;  and  even 
there,  if  by  any  possibility  the  pleasure  can  be  obtained  without  superfluous  cost. 
This  then  is  the  character  which  the  son  of  the  Queen  of  England  bears,  in 
the  estimation  of  the  vast  majority  of  his  mother's  subjects.  Almost  any  and 
every  one  you  meet  in  London  will  tell  you,  as  something  beyond  doubt,  that  the 
Prince  of  Wales  is  dull,  stingy,  coarse,  and  profligate.  As  for  the  anecdotes 
which  are  told  of  his  habits  and  tastes  by  the  artists  and  officials  of  the  theatres 
which  he  frequents,  I  might  fairly  leave  them  out  of  the  question,  because  most 
of  them  that  I  have  heard  seem  to  me  obvious  improbabilities  and  exaggerations. 
They  have  nevertheless  a  certain  value  in  helping  us  to  a  sort  of  historical  esti- 
mate of  the  Prince's  character.  Half  the  stories  told  of  the  humors  and  de- 
baucheries of  Sheridan  and  Fox  are  doubtless  inventions  or  exaggerations  ;  bu' 
we  are  quite  safe  in  assuming  that  the  persons  of  whom  such  stories  abounu 
were  not  frugal,  temperate,  and  orderly  men.  If  the  Prince  of  Wales  is  not  a 
young  man  of  dissipated  habits,  then  a  phenomenon  is  exhibited  in  his  case 
which  is,  I  fancy,  without  any  parallel  in  history — the  phenomenon  of  a  whole 


THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES.  43 

watchful  nation,  studying  the  character  and  habits  of  one  whose  position  com- 
pels him  to  live  as  in  a  house  of  glass,  and  coming,  after  years  of  observation,  to 
a  conclusion  at  once  unanimous  and  erroneous.  But  were  it  proved  beyond  the 
remotest  possibility  of  doubt  that  the  Prince  is  personally  chaste  as  a  Joseph, 
temperate  as  Father  Mathew,  tender  to  his  wife  as  the  elder  Hamlet,  attached  to 
his  mother  as  Hamlet  the  younger,  it  would  still  remain  a  fact  indisputable  to  all 
of  us  in  London,  who  have  eyes  to  see  and  ears  to  hear,  that  the  Prince  is  addicted 
to  vulgar  amusements  ;  that  he  patronizes  indecent  exhibitions  ;  that  he  is  given 
to  the  companionship  of  profligate  men,  and  lends  his  helping  hand  to  the  suc- 
cess and  the  popularity  of  immoral  and  lascivious  women. 

What  is  to  be  the  effect  upon  England  of  the  reign  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  ? 
Will  England  and  her  statesmen  endure  the  rule  of  a  profligate  sovereign  ?  No 
country  can  have  undergone  in  equal  time  a  greater  revolution  in  public  taste 
and  sentiment  at  least,  if  not  in  morals,  than  England  has  since  the  time  of 
George  the  Fourth.  No  genius,  no  eloquence,  no  political  wisdom  or  merits 
could  now  induce  the  English  people  to  put  up  with  the  open  and  undisguised 
excesses  of  a  Fox ;  nor  could  any  English  statesman  of  the  rank  of  Fox  be 
found  now  who  would  condescend  to  pander  to  the  vices  of  a  George  the  Fourth. 
Thirty  years  of  decorum  in  the  Court,  the  Parliament,  and  the  press  have  created 
a  public  feeling  in  England  which  will  not  long  bear  to  be  too  openly  offended 
by  any  one.  But,  although  I  may  seem  at  first  to  be  enunciating  a  paradox,  I 
must  say  that  all  this  is  rather  in  favor  of  the  chances  of  the  Prince  of  Wales 
than  against  them.  It  will  take  so  small  a  sacrifice  on  his  part  to  satisfy  every- 
body, that  only  the  very  extravagance  of  folly  could  lead  him  long  astray  on  any 
unsatisfactory  course,  when  once  he  has  become  directly  responsible  to  the  na- 
tion. We  are  not  exacting  in  England  as  regards  the  private  conduct  of  our 
great  people.  We  only  ask  them  to  be  publicly  decorous.  Everywhere  in  Eng- 
lish society  there  is  a  quite  unconscious,  naive  sort  of  Pharisaism,  the  unayowed 
but  actual  principle  of  which  is  that  it  matters  very  little  if  a  man  does  the 
wrong  thing,  provided  he  publicly  acts  and  says  the  right  thing.  I  am  per- 
fectly satisfied  that  the  great  bu'.k  of  respectable  and  Philistine  society  in  Eng- 
land would  regard  Robert  Dale  Owen,  with  his  pure  life  and  his  views  on  the 
question  of  divorce,  as  a  far  more  objectionable  person  than  the  veriest  profligate 
who  did  evil  stealthily,  and  professed  to  maintain  the  theory  of  a  rigid  marriage 
bond.  The  Prince  of  Wales  will  therefore  need  very  little  actual  improvement 
in  his  way  of  life,  in  order  to  be  all  that  his  future  subjects  will  expect,  or  care 
to  ask.  No  one  wants  the  Prince  to  be  a  man  of  ability  ;  no  one  wishes  him  to 
be  a  good  speaker.  If  Albert  Edward  were  to  rise  in  the  House  of  Lords  some 
night,  and  deliver  a  powerful  and  eloquent  speech,  as  Prince  Napoleon  has  often 
done  in  the  French  Senate,  the  English  public  would  be  not  only  surprised  but 
shocked.  Such  a  feat  performed  by  a  Prince  would  seem  almost  as  much  out 
of  place,  as  if  he  were  to  follow  the  example  of  Caligula  or  Nero  and  exhibit 
himself  in  the  arena  as  a  gladiator.  Of  course  the  idea  of  the  Prince  of  Wales 
fulminating  against  the  policy  of  the  Crown  and  the  Government,  after  the  fash- 
ion of  Prince  Napoleon,  would  be  simply  intolerable  to  the  British  mind  of  to- 
day— a  thing  so  outrageous  as  indeed  to  be  practically  inconceivable.  The 
Prince  of  Wales's  part  during  the  coming  years,  whether  as  first  subject  or  as 
ruler,  is  as  easy  as  could  well  be  assigned  to  man.  It  is  the  very  reverse  of 
Bottom's  ;  it  is  to  avoid  all  roaring.  He  must  be  decorous,  and  we  will  put  up 
with  any  degree  of  dulness  ;  he  must  be  decent,  and  we  will  all  agree  to  know 
nothing  of  any  private  compensations  wherewith  he  may  repay  himself  for  public 


44  THE  PRINCE  OF  WALES. 

propriety.  All  the  influences  of  English  statesmanship,  rank,  religion,  jour- 
nalism, patriotism,  Philistinism,  and  flunkeyism,  will  instinctively  combine  to 
screen  the  throne  against  scandal,  if  only  the  throne  will  consent  to  allow  of  the 
possibility  of  such  a  protection.  I  have  hardly  ever  known  an  Englishman 
whose  hostility  to  monarchical  institutions  went  so  far  that  he  would  not  be 
ready  to  say,  "  We  have  got  a  monarchy  ;  let  us  try  to  make  the  best  we  can 
of  it."  Therefore  the  Prince  of  Wales  must  be  the  very  Marplot  or  L'Etourdi 
of  princes,  if  he  cannot  contrive  to  make  himse'f  endurable  to  a  people  who  will 
bear  so  much  rather  than  be  at  the  trouble  of  a  Change.  Of  course  it  is  possible 
that  his  faults  may  become  grosser  and  more  unmanageable  with  years  (indeed, 
he  is  quite  old  enough  already  to  have  sown  his  wild  oats  long  since);  and  it 
would  b2  a  hard  trial  upon  decorous  English  statesmen  and  the  English  public 
to  endure  an  openly  profligate  King.  Yet  even  that  nuisance  I  think  would  be 
endured  for  one  lifetime  at  all  events,  rather  than  encounter  the  danger  and 
trouble  of  any  organic  change. 

So  long  as  the  Prince  of  Wales  keeps  out  of  politics,  he  may  hold  his  place 
well  enough  ;  the  England  of  to-day  could  far  better  endure  even  a  George  the 
Fourth  than  a  George  the  Third.  I  have  little  doubt  that  the  Prince  of  Wales, 
when  he  comes  to  be  King,  will  be  discreet  in  this  matter  at  least.  He  has  never 
indeed  shown  any  particular  interest  in  political  affairs,  so  far  as  I  have  heard. 
He  seems  to  care  little  or  nothing  about  the  contests  of  parties.  Some  three  or 
four  years  ago,  at  the  time  of  the  celebrated  Adullamite  secession  from  the  Lib- 
eral party,  there  was  some  grumbling  among  Radicals  because  it  was  reported 
that  the  Prince  of  Wales  had  expressed  a  wish  to  make  the  acquaintance  of 
Robert  Lowe,  the  brilliant,  eccentric  chief  of  the  secession,  and  had  had  Lowe 
brought  to  him  and  spent  a  long  time  talking  with  him  ;  and  it  was  urged  that 
this  was  done  by  the  Prince  to  mark  his  approval  of  the  Adullamites  and  his 
dislike  of  radicalism.  But  just  about  the  very  same  time  the  Prince  took  some 
trouble  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  John  Bright,  and  paid  what  might  have 
been  considered  very  flattering  attentions  to  the  great  popular  tribune.  The 
Prince  has  more  than  once  visited  the  Pope,  and  he  has  likewise  more  than  once 
visited  Garibaldi.  Indeed,  he  seems  to  have  a  harmless  liking  for  knowing  per- 
sonally all  people  who  are  talked  about ;  and  I  fancy  he  hunted  up  the  Pope, 
and  Garibaldi,  and  John  Bright,  and  Robert  Lowe,  just  as  he  sends  for  Mr. 
Toole  the  comic  actor,  or  Blondin,  or  Chang  the  giant.  Nothing  can  be  safer 
and  better  for  the  Prince  in  the  future  than  to  keep  to  this  wholesome  indiffer- 
ence to  politics.  In  England  we  could  stand  Any  length  of  the  reign  of  King 
Log.  I  shall  not  venture  to  conjecture  what  might  happen  if  the  Prince  of 
Wales  were  to  develop  a  perverse  inclination  to  "meddle  and  muddle"  in  pol- 
itics, because  I  think  such  a  thing  highly  improbable.  Mv  impression  is,  on  the 
whole,  that  things  will  go  on  under  the  reign  of  the  next  sovereign  in  England 
very  much  as  they  have  been  going  on  under  the  present;  that  the  Prince  of 
Wales  will  be  induced  to  pay  a  little  more  attention  to  decorum  and  public  pro- 
priety than  he  has  hitherto  done  ;  and  that  the  people  of  England  will  laugh  at 
him  and  cheer  for  him,  talk  scandal  about  him  and  sing  God  save  him,  and 
finally  endure  him,  on  somewhat  the  same  principle  as  that  which  induces  the 
New  York  public  to  endure  overcrowded  street-cars  and  miserable  postal  ar- 
rangements— just  because  it  is  less  trouble  to  each  individual  to  put  up  with  his 
share  of  a  defective  institution,  than  to  go  out  of  his  way  for  the  purpose  of  en- 
deavoring to  organize  any  combination  to  get  rid  of  it. 


THE  KING  OF  PRUSSIA. 


RONSARD,  in  one  of  his  songs  addressed  to  his  mistress,  tells  her  that 
in  her  declining  years  she  will  be  able  to  boast  that  "  When  I  was  young 
a  poet  sang  of  me."  In  a  less  romantic  spirit  the  writer  of  this  article  may 
boast  in  old  age,  should  he  attain  to  such  blest  condition,  that  "When  I  was 
young  a  king  spoke  to  me."  That  was  the  only  king  or  sovereign  of  any  kind 
with  whom  I  ever  exchanged  a  word,  and  therefore  I  may  perhaps  be  allowed 
to  be  proud  of  the  occasion  and  reluctant  to  let  it  sleep  in  oblivion.  The  king 
was  William,  King  of  Prussia,  and  the  occasion  of  my  being  spoken  to  by  a  sov- 
ereign was  when  I,  with  some  other  journalists,  was  formally  presented  to  King 
William  after  his  coronation,  and  listened  to  a  word  or  two  of  commonplace, 
good-humored  courtesy. 

The  coronation  of  King  William  took  place,  as  many  readers  of  THE  GAL- 
AXY are  probably  aware,  in  the  old  historic  town  of  Konigsberg,  on  the  extreme 
northeastern  frontier  of  Prussia,  a  town  standing  on  one  of  the  inlets  of  the  Bal- 
tic Sea,  where  once  the  Teutonic  Knights,  mentioned  by  Chaucer,  were  power- 
ful. Carlyle's  "  Frederick  the  Great "  had  brought  Konigsberg  prominently  before 
the  eyes  and  minds  of  English-speaking  readers,  just  previously  to  the  ceremony 
in  which  King  William  was  the  most  conspicuous  performer.  It  is  the  city 
where  Immanuel  Kant  passed  his  long  and  fruitful  life,  and  which  he  never 
quitted.  It  is  a  picturesque  city  in  its  way,  although  not  to  be  compared  with 
its  neighbor  Dantzic.  It  is  a  city  of  canals  and  streams,  and  many  bridges,  and 
quaint,  narrow,  crooked  streets,  wherein  are  frequent  long-bearded  and  gabar- 
dined  Jews,  and  where  Hebrew  inscriptions  are  seen  over  many  shop-windows 
and  on  various  door-plates.  In  its  centre  the  city  is  domineered  over  by  a 
Schloss,  or  castle-palace,  and  it  was  in  the  chapel  of  this  palace  that  the  cere- 
mony of  coronation  took  place,  which  provoked  at  the  time  so  many  sharp  criti- 
cisms and  so  much  of  popular  ridicule. 

The  first  time  I  saw  the  King  was  when  he  rode  in  procession  through  the 
indent  city,  some  two  or  three  days  before  the  performance  of  the  coronation. 
He  seemed  a  fine,  dignified,  handsome,  somewhat  bluff  old  man — he  was  then 
sixty-four  or  sixty-five  years  of  age — with  gray  hair  and  gray  moustache,  and  an 
expression  which,  if  it  did  not  denote  intellectual  power,  had  much  of  cheerful 
strength  and  the  charm  of  a  certain  kind  of  frank  manhood  about  it.  He  rode 
well — riding  is  one  of  the  accomplishments  in  which  kings  almost  always  excel 
— and  his  military  costume  became  him.  Certainly  no  one  was  just  then  dis- 
posed to  be  very  enthusiastic  about  him,  but  every  one  was  inclined  to  make  the 
best  of  the  sovereign  and  the  situation  ;  to  forget  the  past  and  look  hopefully 
into  the  future.  The  manner  in  which  the  coronation  ceremony  was  conducted, 
and  the  speech  which  the  King  delivered  soon  after  it,  produced  a  terrible  shock 
of  disappointment ;  for  in  each  the  King  manifested  that  he  understood  the  crown 
to  be  a  gift  not  from  his  people,  but  from  heaven.  To  me  the  ceremonies  in  the 
chapel,  splendid  and  picturesque  as  was  the  mise  en  scene,  appeared  absurd  and 
even  ridiculous.  The  King,  bedizened  in  a  regal  costume  which  suggested 
Drury  Lane  or  Niblo's  Garden,  lifting  a  crown  from  off  the  altar  (was  it,  by  the 
way,  an  altar  ?)  and,  without  intervention  of  human  aid  other  than  his  own  hands, 
placing  it  upon  his  head,  to  signify  that  he  had  his  crown  from  heaven,  not  from 


40  THE  KING  OF  PRUSSIA 

man  ;  then  putting  another  crown  upon  the  head  of  his  wife,  to  show  that  she 
derived  her  dignities  from  him  ;  and  then  turning  round  and  brandishing  a  gi 
gantic  sword,  as  symbolical  of  his  readiness  to  defend  his  State  and  people — all 
this  seemed  to  me  too  suggestive  of  the  opera  comique  to  suit  the  simple  dignity 
of  the  handsome  old  soldier.  Far  better  and  nobler  did  he  look  in  his  military 
uniform  and  with  his  spiked  helmet,  as  he  sat  on  his  horse  in  the  streets,  than 
when,  arrayed  in  crimson  velvet  cloak  and  other  such  stage  paraphernalia  of  con- 
ventional royalty,  he  stood  in  the  castle  chapel,  the  central  figure  in  a  ceremo- 
nial of  mediaeval  splendor  and  worse  than  mediaeval  tediousness. 

But  the  King's  face,  bearing,  and  manner,  as  I  saw  him  in  Konigsberg,  and 
immediately  afterwards  in  Berlin,  agreeably  disappointed  me.  It  was  one  of  the 
best  faces  to  be  seen  among  all  the  throng  at  banquet  and  ball  and  pageant 
during  those  days  of  gorgeous  and  heavy  ceremonial.  At  the  coronation  per- 
formances there  were  two  other  personages  who  may  be  said  to  have  divided 
public  curiosity  and  interest  with  the  King.  One  was  the  illustrious  Meyerbeer, 
who  composed  and  conducted  the  coronation  ode,  which  thus  became  almost  his 
swan-song,  his  latest  notes  before  death.  The  other  was  a  man  whose  name  has 
lately  again  divided  attention  with  that  of  the  King  of  Prussia — Marshal  Mac- 
M.ihon,  Duke  of  Magenta.  MacMahon  was  sent  to  represent  the  Emperor  of 
the  French  at  the  coronation,  and  he  was  then  almost  fresh  from  the  glory  of 
his  Lombardy  battles.  There  was  great  curiosity  among  the  Konigsberg  pub- 
lic to  get  a  glimpse  of  this  military  hero;  and  although  even  Prussians  could 
hardly  be  supposed  to  take  delight  in  a  fame  acquired  at  the  expense  of  other 
Germans,  I  remember  being  much  struck  by  the  quiet,  candid  good-humor 
with  which  people  acknowledged  that  he  had  beaten  their  countrymen.  There 
w  is,  indeed,  a  little  vexation  and  anger  felt  when  some  of  the  representatives  of 
Posen,  the  Prussian  Poland,  cheered  somewhat  too  significantly  for  MacMahon 
as  he  drove  in  his  carriage  from  the  palace.  The  Prussians  generally  felt  an- 
noyed that  the  Poles  should  have  thus  publicly  and  ostentatiously  demonstrated 
their  sympathy  with  France  and  their  admiration  of  the  French  general  who  had 
defeated  a  German  army.  But  except  for  this  little  ebullition  of  feeling,  natural 
enough  on  both  sides,  MacMahon  was  a  popular  figure  at  the  King's  corona- 
tion ;  and  before  the  ceremonies  were  over,  the  King  himself  had  become  any- 
thing but  popular.  The  foreigners  liked  him  for  the  most  part  because  his  man- 
ners were  plain,  frank,  hearty,  and  agreeable,  and  to  the  foreigners  it  was  a  mat- 
ter of  little  consequence  what  he  said  or  did  in  the  accepting  of  his  crown.  But 
the  Germans  winced  under  his  blunt  repudiation  of  the  principle  of  popular  sov- 
ereignty, and  in  the  minds  of  some  alarmists  painful  and  odious  memories  began 
to  revive  and  to  transform  themselves  into  terrible  omens  for  the  future. 

For  this  pleasant,  genial,  gray-haired  man,  whose  smile  had  so  much  of  honest 
frankness  and  even  a  certain  simple  sweetness  about  it,  had  a  grim  and  blood- 
stained history  behind  him.  Not  Napoleon  the  Third  himself  bore  a  more  omi- 
nous record  when  he  ascended  the  throne.  The  blood  of  the  Berliners  was  pur- 
ple on  those  hands  which  now  gave  so  kindly  and  cheery  a  welcome  to  all 
comers.  The  revolutionists  of  Baden  held  in  bitter  hate  the  stern  prince  who 
was  so  unscrupulous  in  his  mode  of  crushing  out  popular  agitation.  From 
Cologne  to  Konigsberg,  from  Hamburg  to  Trieste,  all  Germans  had  for  years  had 
reason  only  too  strong  to  regard  William  Prince  of  Prussia  as  the  most  resolute 
and  relentless  enemy  of  popular  liberty.  When  the  Pope  was  inspiring  the 
hearts  of  freemen  and  patriots  everywhere  in  Europe  with  sudden  and  splendid 
hopes  doomed  to  speedy  disappointment,  the  Prince  of  Prussia,  was  execrated 


THE  KING  OF  PRUSSIA.  47 

with  the  Hapsburgs,  the  Bourbons,  and  the  Romanoffs.  The  one  on.y  thing 
commonly  said  in  his  favor  was  that  he  was  honest  and  would  keep  his  word. 
The  late  Earl  of  Clarendon,  one  of  the  most  incautious  and  blundering  of  di 
plomatists  (whom  after  his  death  the  English  newspapers  have  been  eulogizing  as 
a  very  sage  and  prince  of  statesmen),  embodied  this  opinion  sharply  in  a  few 
words  which  he  spoke  to  a  friend  of  mine  in  Konigsberg.  Clarendon  represented 
Uueen  Victoria  at  the  coronation  ceremonies,  and  my  friend  happened  in  conver- 
sation with  him  to  be  expressing  a  highly  disparaging  opinion  of  the  King  of 
Prussia.  "There  is  just  this  to  be  said  of  him,"  the  British  Envoy  remarked 
aloud  in  the  centre  of  a  somewhat  miscellaneous  group  of  listeners — "he  is  an 
honest  man  and  a  man  of  his  word  ;  he  is  not  a  Corsican  conspirator." 

Yes,  this  was  and  is  the  character  of  the  King  of  Prussia.  In  good  and  evil 
he  kept  his  word.  You  might  trust  him  to  do  as  he  had  said.  During  the 
greater  part  of  his  life  the  things  he  promised  to  do  and  did  were  not  such  as 
free  men  could  approve.  He  set  out  in  life  with  a  genuine  detestation  of  liberal 
principles  and  of  anything  that  suggested  popular  revolution.  William  of  Prus- 
sia is  certainly  not  a  man  of  intellect  or  broad  intelligence  or  flexibility  of  mind. 
He  would  be  in  private  life  a  respectable,  steady,  rather  dull  sort  of  man,  honest 
as  the  sun,  just  as  likely  to  go  wrong  as  right  in  his  opinions,  perhaps  indeed  a 
shade  more  likely  to  go  wrong  than  right,  and  sure  to  be  doggedly  obstinate  in  any 
opinion  which  he  conceived  to  be  founded  on  a  principle.  Horror  of  revolution  was 
naturally  his  earliest  public  sentiment.  He  was  one  of  the  princes  who  entered 
P  iris  in  1815  with  the  allied  sovereigns  when  they  came  to  stamp  out  Bonapart- 
ism  ;  and  he  seemed  to  have  gone  on  to  late  manhood  with  the  conviction  that 
the  mission  of  honest  kings  was  to  prevent  popular  agitation  from  threatening 
the  divine  right  of  the  throne.  Naturally  enough,  a  man  of  such  a  character, 
whose  chief  merits  were  steadfastness  and  honesty,  was  much  disgusted  by  the 
vacillation,  the  weakness,  the  half-unconscious  deceitfulness  of  his  brother,  the  lale 
Frederick  William.  Poor  Frederick  William  !  well-meaning,  ill-doing  dreamer, 
"wind-changing"  as  Warwick,  a  sort  of  Rene  of  Anjou  placed  in  a  responsi- 
ble position  and  cast  into  a  stormy  age.  What  blighted  hopes  and  bloody  streets 
were  justly  laid  to  his  charge — to  the  charge  of  him  who  asked  nothing  better 
th  ;n  to  be  able  to  oblige  everybody  and  make  all  his  people  happy  !  Frederick 
William  loved  poetry  and  poets  in  a  feeble,  dilettante  sort  of  way.  He  liked, 
one  might  say,  to  be  thought  to  like  the  Muses  and  the  Graces.  He  used  to  in- 
sist upon  Tieck  the  poet  reading  aloud  his  new  compositions  to  the  royal  circle 
of  evenings  ;  and  when  the  bard  began  to  read  the  King  would  immediately  fall 
asleep,  and  nod  until  he  nodded  himself  into  wakefulness  again  ;  and  then  he 
would  start  up  and  say,  "  Bravo,  Tieck  !  Delightful,  Tieck  !  Go  on  reading, 
Tieck!"  and  then  to  sleep  again.  He  liked  in  this  sort  of  fashion  the  poetic 
and  sentimental  aspects  of  revolution,  and  he  dandled  popular  movements  on  his 
royal  knee  until  they  became  too  demonstrative  and  frightened  him,  and  then  he 
shook  them  off  and  shrieked  for  the  aid  of  his  strong-nerved  brother.  One  day 
Frederick  William  would  be  all  for  popular  government  and  representative 
monarchy,  and  what  not ;  the  next  day  he  became  alarmed  and  receded,  and  was 
e->,i;er  to  crush  the  hopes  he  had  himself  awakened.  He  was  always  breaking 
his  word  to  his  people  and  his  country,  and  yet  he  was  not  personally  an  un- 
truthful man  like  English  Charles  the  First.  In  private  life  he  would  have  been 
amiable,  respectable,  gently  aesthetical  and  sentimental  ;  placed  in  a  position  of 
responsibility  amid  the  seething  passions  and  conflicting  political  currents  of 
1848,  he  proved  himself  a  very  dastard  and  caitill.  Germ  my  could  hardly  have 


48  THE  KING  OF  PRUSSIA. 

had  upon  the  throne  of  Prussia  a  worse  man  for  such  a  crisis.  He  was  unlucky 
in  every  way;  for  his  vacillation  drew  on  him  the  repute  of  hypocrisy,  and  his 
whimsical  excitable  manners  procured  for  him  the  reproach  of  intemperance.  A 
sincerely  pious  man  in  his  way,  he  was  almost  universally  set  down  as  a  hypo- 
crite ;  a  sober  man  who  only  drank  wine  medicinally  on  the  order  of  his  physi- 
cians, he  was  favored  throughout  Europe  with  the  nickname  of  "  King  Clic- 
quot." His  utter  imbecility  before  and  after  the  massacre  of  those  whom  he 
called  his  "beloved  Berliners,"  made  him  more  detestable  to  Berlin  than  was  his 
blunt  and  stern  brother,  the  present  King,  who  gave  with  his  own  lips  the  orders 
which  opened  fire  on  the  population.  A  more  unkingly  figure  than  that  of  poor, 
weak,  well-intentioned,  sentimental,  lachrymose  Frederick  William,  never  in  our 
days  at  least  has  been  seen  under  a  royal  canopy. 

It  was  but  natural  that  such  a  character  or  no-character  as  this  should  disgust 
his  brother  and  successor,  the  present  King.  Frederick  William,  as  everybody 
knows,  had  no  son  to  succeed  him.  The  stout-hearted  William  would  have 
liked  his  brother  and  sovereign  to  be  one  thing  or  the  other  ;  a  despot  of  course 
he  would  have  preferred,  but  he  desired  consistency  and  steadfastness  on  what- 
ever side.  William,  it  must  be  owned,  was  for  many  years  a  downright  stupid, 
despotic  old  feudalist.  At  one  of  his  brother's  councils  he  flung  his  sword  upon 
the  table  and  vowed  that  he  would  rather  appeal  to  that  weapon  than  consent  to 
rule  over  a  people  who  dared  to  claim  the  right  of  voting  their  own  taxes.  He 
appears  to  have  had  the  sincere  stupid  faith  that  Heaven  directly  tells  or  teaches 
kings  how  to  rule,  and  that  a  king  fails  in  his  religious  duty  who  takes  counsel 
of  aught  save  his  own  convictions.  Perhaps  a  good  many  people  in  lowlier  life 
are  like  William  of  Prussia  in  this  respect.  He  certainly  was  not  the  only  per- 
son in  our  time  who  habitually  accepted  his  own  likings  and  dislikings  as  the 
appointed  ordinances  of  Heaven.  In  my  own  circle  of  acquaintance  I  think  I 
have  known  such  individuals. 

Thus  William  of  Prussia  strode  through  life  sword  in  hand  menacing  and, 
where  he  could,  suppressing  popular  movement.  Yet  he  was  saved  from  utter 
detestation  by  the  admitted  integrity  of  his  character — a  virtue  so  dear  to  Ger- 
mans, that  for  its  sake  they  will  pardon  harshness  and  sometimes  even  stupidity. 
People  disliked  or  dreaded  him,  but  they  despised  his  brother.  There  was  a 
certain  simplicity,  too,  always  seen  in  William's  mode  of  living  which  pleased  the 
country.  There  was  no  affectation  about  him  ;  he  was  almost  as  much  of  a 
plain,  unpretending  soldier  as  General  Grant  himself.  Since  he  became  King, 
anybody  passing  along  the  famous  Unterden  Linden  might  see  the  white-haired, 
simple  old  man  writing  or  reading  at  the  window  of  his  palace.  He  was  in  this 
respect  a  sort  of  military  Louis  Philippe  ;  a  Louis  Philippe  with  a  strong  pur- 
pose and  without  any  craft.  Therefore,  when  the  death  of  his  brother  in  1861 
called  him  to  the  throne,  he  found  a  people  anxious  to  give  him  credit  for  every 
good  quality  and  good  purpose,  willing  to  forget  the  past  and  look  hopefully  into 
the  coming  time.  They  only  smiled  at  his  renewal  of  the  coronation  ceremonies 
at  Konigsberg,  believing  that  the  old  soldier  thought  there  was  something  of  a 
religious  principle  somehow  mixed  up  in  them,  and  that  it  was  the  imaginary 
piety,  not  the  substantial  pomp,  which  commended  to  his  mind  so  gorgeous  and 
costly  an  anachronism.  After  the  coronation  ceremonies,  however,  came  back 
the  old  unpopularity.  The  King,  people  said,  has  learned  nothing  and  forgotten 
nothing  since  he  was  Prince  of  Prussia.  Every  act  he  did  after  his  accession 
to  the  crown  seemed  only  more  and  more  to  confirm  this  impression.  It  was. 
1  think,  about  this  time  that  the  celebrated  "  Diary  "  of  Varnhagen  von  Ense  was 


THE  KING  OF  PRUSSIA.'  49 

published  by  the  niece  of  the  deceased  diplomatist;  a  diary  full  in  itself  of  the 
most  piquant  interest,  but  made  yet  more  piquant  and  interesting  by  the  bitter 
and  foolish  persecution  with  which  the  King's  officials  endeavored  to  suppress 
the  work  and  punish  its  publishers.  I  have  not  read  or  even  seen  the  book  for 
years,  but  the  impression  it  made  on  me  is  almost  as  distinct  just  now  as  it  was 
when  I  laid  down  the  last  of  its  many  and  vivacious  volumes. 

Varnhagen  von  Ense  was  a  bitter  creature,  and  the  pen  with  which  he  wrote  his 
diary  seems  to  have  been  dipped  in  gall  of  special  acridity.  The  diary  goes  over 
many  years  of  Berlin  court  life,  and  the  present  King  of  Prussia  is  one  of  its  cen- 
tral figures.  The  author  does  not  seem  to  have  had  much  respect  for  anybody  ; 
and  King  William  was  evidently  an  object  of  his  particular  detestation.  All  the 
doings  of  the  days  of  1848  are  recorded  or  commented  on,  and  the  pages  are  inter- 
spersed with  notices  of  the  sharp  ungenial  things  said  by  one  royal  personage  of 
another.  If  the  late  Frederick  William  chose  to  say  an  ill-natured  thing  of  Queen 
Victoria  of  England,  down  goes  the  remark  in  Varnhagen's  pages,  and  it  is  chroni- 
cled for  the  perusal  of  all  the  world.  We  learn  from  the  book  that  the  present 
King  of  Prussia  does  not  live  on  the  most  genial  terms  with  his  wife  Augusta  ; 
that  Augusta  has  rather  a  marked  inclination  towards  Liberalism,  and  would  find 
nothing  more  pleasant  than  a  little  coquetry  with  Revolution.  Varnhagen  inti- 
mates that  the  illustrious  lady  loved  lions  and  novelties  of  any  kind,  and  that  at 
the  time  he  writes  she  would  have  been  particularly  glad  to  make  the  acquaint- 
ance of  Louis  Blanc;  and  he  more  than  hints  at  a  decided  inclination  on  her 
part  to  porter  le  pantalon — an  inclination  which  her  husband  was  not  at  all  likely 
to  gratify,  consciously  at  least.  Of  the  progressive  wife  Varnhagen  speaks  with 
no  whit  more  respect  than  of  the  reactionary  husband  ;  and  indeed  he  seems  to 
look  with  irreverent  and  cynical  eyes  on  everything  royal  that  comes  under 
his  observation.  Throughout  the  whole  of  the  diary,  the  figure  of  the  present 
King  comes  out  consistently  and  distinctly.  William  is  always  the  blunt,  dull, 
wrong-headed,  I  might  almost  say  pig-headed  soldier-fanatic,  who  will  do  and 
suffer  and  make  others  do  and  suffer  anything,  in  a  cause  which  he  believes  to 
be  right.  With  all  Varnhagen  von  Ense's  bitterness  and  scorn,  he  gives  us  no 
worse  idea  of  King  William  than  just  this.  But  judging  from  the  expression  of  the 
King's  face,  from  his  manner,  and  from  what  I  have  heard  of  him  in  Berlin  and 
elsewhere,  I  should  say  there  was  a  good  deal  of  individual  kindness  and  bon- 
homie in  him  for  which  the  critic  did  not  give  him  credit.  I  think  he  is,  on  the 
whole,  better  than  Varnhagen  von  Ense  chose  to  paint  him  or  see  him. 

From  Alexander  Humboldt,  as  well  as  from  Varnhagen  von  Ense,  we  learn  a 
good  deal  of  the  inner  life  of  kings  and  queens  and  princes  in  Berlin.  There  is 
something  almost  painful  in  reflecting  on  the  kind  of  life  which  Humboldt  must 
have  led  among  these  people,  whom  he  so  cordially  despised,  and  whom  ifl.  his. 
private  chroniclings  he  so  held  up  to  scorn.  The  great  philosopher  assuredly 
had  a  huge  treasure  of  hatred  locked  up  in  his  heart.  He  detested  and  scorned 
these  royal  personages,  \\lio  so  blandly  patronized  him.  or  were  sometimes  so. 
rough  in  their  condescending  familiarity.  Nothing  takes  the.  gilt  off  the.  life  of 
courts  so  much  as  a  perusal  of  what  Humboldt  has  written  about  it.  Ooe  hardly 
cares  to  think  of  so  great,  and  on  the  whole  so  noble  a  man,  living  a  life  of  what 
seems  so  like  perpetual  dissimulation  ;  of  his.  enduring  these  royal  dullards,  ami 
pert  princesses,  and  doubtless  seeming  profoundly  reverential,  and  then  going, 
home  of  nights  to  put  down  on  paper  his  record  of  their  vulgaritv,  and  selfish- 
ness, and  impertinence.  Sometimes  rlumboldt  was  not  able  to  contain  himself 
within  the  limits  of  court  politeness.  The  late  King  of  Hapove.r  (father,  of  til) ft 


CO  THE  KING  OF  PRUSSIA. 

now  dethroned  King  George)  was  a  rough  brutal  trooper,  who  had  made  himself 
odious  in  England  as  the  Duke  of  Cumberland,  and  was  accused  by  popular 
rumors  of  the  darkest  crimes — unjustly  accused  certainly,  in  the  case  where  he 
was  charged  with  the  murder  of  his  valet.  The  Duke  did  not  make  a  very 
bad  sort  of  King,  as  kings  then  went ;  but  he  retained  all  his  roughness  and 
coarseness  of  manner.  He  once  accosted  Humboldt  in  the  palace  of  the  late 
King  of  Prussia,  and  in  his  pleasant  graceful  way  asked  why  it  was  that  the 
Prussian  court  was  always  full  of  philosophers  and  loose  women — describing 
the  latter  class  of  visitors  by  a  very  direct  and  expressive  word.  "Perhaps," 
replied  Humboldt  blandly,  "  the  King  invites  the  philosophers  to  meet  me,  and 
the  other  persons  to  please  your  Majesty  !  "  Humboldt  seems  to  have  had  lit- 
tle liking  for  any  of  the  illustrious  personages  he  met  under  the  roof  of  the  King 
of  Prussia.  A  brief  record  he  made  of  a  conversation  with  the  late  Prince  Al- 
bert (for  whom  he  expressed  a  great  contempt)  went  far  when  it  was  published 
to  render  the  husband  of  Queen  Victoria  more  unpopular  and  even  detested  in 
Ireland  than  another  Geor,»-  the  Fourth  would  have  been.  The  Irish  people 
will  probably  never  forget  that,  accordiug  to  the  statement  of  Humboldt,  the 
Prince  spoke  contemptuously  of  Irish  national  aspirations,  declared  he  had  no 
sympathy  with  the  Irish,  and  that  they  were  as  restless,  idle,  and  unmanageable 
as  the  Poles — a  pretty  speech,  the  philosopher  remarks,  to  be  made  by  the  hus- 
band of  the  Queen  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  Some  attempt  was  made  when 
this  record  of  Humboldt's  came  to  light  to  dispute  the  truth  of  it;  but  Humboldt 
was  certainly  not  a  liar — and  anyhow  the  Irish  people  believed  the  story  and  it 
did  no  little  mischief;  and  Humboldt  in  his  grave  might  have  had  the  consola- 
tion of  knowing  that  he  had  injured  one  prince  at  least. 

What  we  learn  of  the  King  of  Prussia  through  Humboldt  is  to  the  same  ef- 
fect as  the  teaching  of  Varnhagen's  cynical  spirit  ;  and  I  think,  if  these  keen  ir- 
reverent critics  did  not  do  him  wrong,  his  Majesty  must  have  softened  and  im- 
proved with  the  responsibilities  of  royalty.  In  many  respects  one  might  be  in- 
clined to  compare  him  with  the  English  George  the  Third.  Both  were  indeed 
dull,  decent,  and  fanatical.  But  there  are  some  wide  differences.  George  the 
Third  was  obstinate  in  the  worst  sense  ;  his  was  the  obstinacy  of  a  stupid,  self- 
conceited  man  who  believes  himself  wise  and  right  in  everything.  Now,  I  fancy 
the  King  of  Prussia  is  only  obstinate  in  what  he  conceives,  rightly  or  wrongly,  to 
be  questions  of  duty  and  of  principle  ;  and  that  there  are  many  subjects,  politi- 
cal and  otherwise,  of  which  he  does  not  believe  himself  to  be  the  mcst  com- 
petent judge,  and  which  therefore  he  is  quite  willing  to  leave  to  the  considera- 
tion and  decision  of  others.  For  instance,  it  was  made  evident  that  in  the  be- 
ginning of  the  transactions  which  were  followed  by  (although  they  cannot  be 
said  to  have  caused)  the  present  war,  the  King  more  than  once  expressed  him- 
self willing  to  do  certain  things,  of  which,  however,  Count  von  Bismarck  subse- 
.quently  disapproved  ;  and  the  King  quietly  gave  way.  "You  know  better  than 
!  do  ;  act  as  you  think  best,"  is,  I  believe,  a  quite  common  sentence  on  the  lips 
of  King  William,  when  he  is  talking  with  this  or  that  trusted  minister.  Then 
again  it  has  been  placed  beyond  all  doubt  that  George  the  Third  could  be,  when 
he  thought  fit,  the  most  unabashed  and  unscrupulous  of  liars  ;  and  not  even 
hatred  itself  will  charge  King  William  with  any  act  or  word  of  falsehood  or 
duplicity. 

Steadily  did  the  King  grow  more  and  more  unpopular  after  his  coronation. 
All  the  old  work  of  prosecuting  newspapers  and  snubbing,  or  if  possible  punish- 
ing, free-spoken  politicians,  came  into  play  again.  The  King  quarrelled  fiercel} 


THE  KING  OF  PRUSSIA.  51 

with  his  Parliament  about  the  scheme  of  army  reorganization.  I  think  he  was 
right  as  to  the  scheme,  although  terribly  wrong-headed  and  high-handed  in  his 
way  of  forcing  it  down  the  throats  of  the  people,  and,  aided  by  his  House  of 
Peers,  he  waged  a  sort  of  war  upon  the  nation's  representatives.  Then  first  came 
to  the  front  that  extraordinary  political  figure,  which  before  very  long  had  cast 
into  the  shade  every  other  in  Europe,  even  including  that  of  the  Emperor  Na- 
poleon ;  that  marvellous  compound  of  audacity  and  craft,  candor  and  cunning, 
the  profound  sagacity  of  a  Richelieu,  the  levity  of  a  Palmerston  ;  imperturbably 
good-humored,  inimitably  unscrupulous  ;  a  patriot  without  lofty  emotion  of  any 
kind,  a  statesman  who  could  sometimes  condescend  to  be  a  juggler  ;  part  bully, 
part  buffoon,  but  always  a  man  of  supreme  courage,  inexhaustible  resources  ot 
brain  and  tongue — always  in  short  a  man  of  genius.  I  need  hardly  add  that  I  am 
speaking  of  the  Count  von  Bismarck. 

At  the  time  of  the  Schleswig-Holstein  campaign,  there  was  probably  no  public 
man  in  Europe  so  generally  unpopular  as  the  King  of  Prussia,  except  perhaps 
his  Minister,  the  Count  von  Bismarck.  In  England  it  was  something  like  an 
article  of  faith  to  believe  that  the  King  was  a  bloodthirsty  old  tyrant,  his  Prime 
Minister  a  combination  of  Strafford  and  Sejanus,  and  his  subjects  generally  a  set 
of  beer-bemuddled  and  servile  blockheads.  The  dislike  felt  toward  the  King 
was  extended  to  the  members  of  his  family,  and  the  popular  conviction  in  Eng- 
land was  that  the  Princess  Victoria,  wife  of  the  King's  son,  had  a  dull  coarse 
drunkard  for  a  husband.  It  is  perfectly  wonderful  how  soon  an  absurdly  errone- 
ous idea,  if  there  is  anything  about  it  which  jumps  with  the  popular  humor, 
takes  hold  of  the  public  mind  of  England.  The  English  people  regarded  the 
Prussians  with  utter  detestation  and  contempt.  Not  only  that,  but  they  regarded 
it  as  quite  a  possible  and  even  likely  thing  that  poor  brave  little  Denmark,  with 
a  population  hardly  larger  than  that  of  the  city  of  New  York,  could  hold  her 
own,  alone,  against  the  combined  forces  of  Austria  and  Prussia.  One  might 
have  thought  that  there  never  was  a  Frederick  the  Great  or  an  Archduke 
Charles  ;  that  the  only  part  ever  played  in  history  by  Germans  was  that  of  im- 
potent braggarts  and  stupid  cowards.  When  there  seemed  some  prospect  of 
England's  drawing  the  sword  for  Denmark,  "  Punch  "  published  a  cartoon  which 
was  very  popular  and  successful.  It  represented  an  English  sailor  and  soldier 
of  the  conventional  dramatic  style,  looking  with  utter  contempt  at  two  awkward 
shambling  boobies  with  long  hair  and  huge  meerschaums — one  booby  supposed 
to  represent  Prussia,  the  other  Austria ;  and  Jack  Tar  says  to  his  friend  the  red- 
coat :  "  They  can't  expect  us  to  fight  fellows  like  those,  but  we'll  kick  them,  of 
course,  with  pleasure."  This  so  fairly  represented  the  average  public  opinion  of 
England  that  there  was  positively  some  surprise  felt  in  London  when  it  was 
found  that  the  Prussians  really  could  fight  at  all.  Towards  the  Austrians  there 
was  nothing  like  the  same  ill-feeling  ;  and  when  Bismarck's  war  against  Austria 
(I  cannot  better  describe  it)  broke  out  shortly  after,  the  sympathy  of  England 
went  almost  unanimously  with  the  enemy  of  Prussia.  Ninety-nine  men  out  of 
every  hundred  firmly  believed  that  Austria  would  clutch  Italy  with  one  hand  and 
Prussia  with  the  other,  and  easily  choke  the  life  out  of  both.  About  the  merits 
of  the  quarrel  nobody  in  England  outside  the  range  of  a  very  few  politicians  and 
journalists  troubled  himself  at  all.  It  was  settled  that  Austria  had  somehow 
come  to  represent  the  cause  of  human  freedom  and  progress  ;  that  the  King  of 
Prussia  was  a  stupid  and  brutal  old  trooper,  hurried  to  his  ruin  by  the  evil  coun- 
sels of  a  drunken  Mephistopheles  ;  and  that  the  Austrian  forces  would  simply 
walk  over  the  Prussians  into  Berlin.  There  was  but  one  newspaper  in  London 


52  THE  KING  OF  PRUSSIA. 

(and  it  has  since  died)  which  ventured  to  suggest,  first,  that  perhaps  the  Prus- 
sians had  the  right  side  of  the  quarrel,  and  next,  that  perhaps  they  would  have 
the  better  in  the  fight. 

With  the  success  of  Prussia  at  Sadowa  ended  King  William's  personal  un- 
popularity in  Europe.  Those  who  were  prepared  to  take  anything  like  a  rational 
view  of  the  situation  began  to  see  that  there  must  be  some  manner  of  great 
cause  behind  such  risks,  sacrifices,  and  success.  Those  who  disliked  Prussia 
more  than  ever,  as  many  in  France  did,  were  disposed  to  put  the  King  out  of 
their  consideration  altogether,  and  to  turn  their  detestation  wholly  on  the  King's 
Minister.  In  fact,  Bismarck  so  entirely  eclipsed  or  occulted  the  King,  that  the 
latter  may  be  said  to  have  disappeared  from  the  horizon  of  European  politics. 
His  good  qualities  or  bad  qualities  no  longer  counted  for  aught  in  the  estimation 
of  foreigners.  Bismarck  was  everything,  the  King  was  nothing.  Now  I  wish 
the  readers  of  THE  GALAXY  not  to  take  this  view  of  the  matter.  In  everything 
which  has  been  done  by  Prussia  since  his  accession  to  the  throne,  King  William 
has  counted  for  something.  His  stern  uncompromising  truthfulness,  seen  as 
clearly  in  the  despatches  he  sent  from  recent  battle-fields  as  in  any  other  deeds 
of  his  life,  has  always  counted  for  much.  So  too  has  his  narrow-minded 
dread  of  anything  which  he  believes  to  savor  of  the  revolution.  So  has 
his  thorough  and  devoted  Germanism.  I  am  convinced  that  it  would  have 
been  far  more  easy  of  late  to  induce  Bismarck  to  make  compromises  with 
seemingly  powerful  enemies  at  the  expense  of  German  soil,  than  it  would 
have  been  to  persuade  Bismarck's  master  to  consent  to  such  proposals. 
The  King's  is  far  more  ot  a  typical  German  character  (except  for  its 
lack  of  intellect)  than  that  of  Bismarck,  ,n  whom  there  is  so  much  of  French 
audacity  as  well  as  of  French  humor.  On  the  other  hand,  I  would  ask  my 
readers  not  to  rush  into  wild  admiration  ot  the  King  of  Prussia,  or  to  suppose 
that  liberty  owes  him  personally  any  direct  thanks.  King  William's  subjects 
know  too  well  that  they  have  little  to  thank  him  for  on  that  score.  Strange  as 
the  comparison  may  seem  at  first,  it  is  not  less  true  that  the  enthusiasm  now  felt 
by  Germans  for  the  King  is  derived  from  just  the  same  source  as  the  early 
enthusiasm  of  Frenchmen  for  the  first  Napoleon.  In  each  man  his  people 
see  the  champion  who  has  repelled  the  aggression  of  the  insolent  foreigner,  and 
has  been  strong  enough  to  pursue  the  foreigner  into  his  own  home  and  there 
chastise  him  for  his  aggression.  The  blind  stupidity  of  Austria  and  the  crimes 
of  Bonapartism  have  made  King  William  a  patriot  King.  When  Thiers  wittily 
and  bitterly  said  that  the  Second  Empire  had  made  two  great  statesmen.  Cavour 
and  Bismarck,  he  might  have  said  with  still  closer  accuracy  that  it  had  made  one 
great  sovereign,  William  of  Prussia.  Never  man  attained  such  a  position  as 
that  lately  won  by  King  William  with  less  of  original  "outfit"  to  qualify  him  for 
the  place.  Five  or  six  years  ago  the  King  of  Prussia  was  as  much  disliked  and 
distrusted  by  his  own  subjects  as  ever  the  Emperor  of  the  French  was  by  the 
followers  of  the  Left.  Look  back  to  the  famous  days  when  "  Bockum-DolfFs 
hat"  seemed  likely  to  become  a  symbol  of  civil  revolution  in  Germany.  Look 
back  to  the  time  when  the  King's  own  son  and  heir  apparent,  the  wnrrior  Crown 
Prince  who  since  has  flamed  across  so  many  a  field  of  blood,  felt  called  upon 
to  make  formal  protest  in  a  public  speech  against  the  illiberal,  repressive, 
and  despotic  policy  of  his  father  !  Think  of  these  things,  and  say  whether  any 
change  could  be  more  surprising  than  that  which  has  converted  King  William 
into  the  typical  champion  and  patriot  of  Germany;  and  when  you  seek  the  ex- 
planation of  the  change,  you  will  simply  find  that  the  worst  enemies  of  Prussia 


THE  KING  OF  PRUSSIA.  53 

have  been  unwittingly  the  kindest  friends  and  the  best  patrons  of  Prussia's 
honest  and  despotic  old  sovereign. 

I  think  the  King  of  Prussia's  subjects  were  not  wrong  when  they  disliked 
and  dreaded  him,  and  I  also  think  they  are  now  not  wrong  when  they  trust  and 
applaud  him.  It  has  been  his  great  good  fortune  to  reign  during  a  period  when 
the  foreign  policy  of  the  State  was  of  infinitely  greater  importance  than  its  do- 
mestic management.  It  became  the  business  of  the  King  of  Prussia  to  help  his 
country  to  assert  and  to  maintain  a  national  existence.  Nothing  better  was 
needed  in  the  sovereign  for  this  purpose  than  the  qualities  of  a  military  dictator, 
and  the  King,  in  this  case,  was  saved  all  trouble  of  thinking  and  planning. 
He  had  but  to  accept  and  agree  to  a  certain  line  of  policy — a  certain  set  of  na- 
tional principles — and  to  put  his  foot  down  on  these  and  see  that  they  were  car- 
ried through.  For  this  object  the  really  manly  and  sturdy  nature  of  the  King 
proved  admirably  adapted.  He  upheld  manfully  and  firmly  the  standard  of  the 
nation.  His  defective  qualities  were  rendered  inactive,  and  had  indeed  no  occa- 
sion or  chance  to  display  themselves,  while  all  that  was  good  of  him  came  into 
full  activity  and  bold  relief.  But  I  do  not  believe  that  the  character  of  the  King 
in  any  wise  changed.  He  was  a  dull,  honest,  fanatical  martinet  when  he  turned 
his  cannon  against  German  liberals  in  1848;  he  was  a  dull,  honest,  fanatical 
martinet  when  he  unfurled  the  flag  of  Prussia  against  the  Austrians  in  1866 
and  against  the  French  in  1870.  The  brave  old  man  is  only  happy  when  doing 
what  he  thinks  right ;  but  he  wants  alike  the  intellect  and  the  susceptibilities 
which  enable  people  to  distinguish  right  from  wrong,  despotism  from  justice, 
necessary  firmness  from  stolid  obstinacy.  But  for  the  wars  and  the  great  nation- 
al issues  which  rose  to  claim  instant  decision.  King  William  would  have  gone  on 
dissolving  Parliaments  and  punishing  newspapers,  levying  taxes  without  the  con- 
sent of  representatives,  and  making  the  police-officer  the  master  of  Berlin.  The 
vigor  which  was  so  popular  when  employed  in  resisting  the  French,  would  as- 
suredly otherwise  have  found  occupation  in  repressing  the  Prussians.  I  see 
nothing  to  admire  in  King  William  but  his  courage  and  his  honesty.  People 
who  know  him  personally  speak  delightedly  of  his  sweet  and  genial  manners  in 
private  life  ;  and  I  have  observed  that,  like  many  another  old  moustache,  he  has 
the  art  of  making  himself  highly  popular  with  the  ladies.  There  is  a  celebrated 
little  prima  donna  as  well  known  in  London  as  in  Berlin,  who  can  only  speak  of 
the  bluff  monarch  as  der  siisse  Konig — "the  sweet  King."  Indeed,  there  are 
not  wanting  people  who  hint  that  Queen  Augusta  is  not  always  quite  pleased  at 
the  manner  in  which  the  venerable  soldier  makes  himself  agreeable  to  dames 
and  demoiselles.  Certainly  the  ladies  seem  to  be  generally  very  enthusiastic 
about  his  Majesty  when  they  come  into  acquaintanceship  with  him,  and  to  the 
Prima  donna  I  have  mentioned  his  kindness  and  courtesy  have  been  only  such 
as  are  well  worthy  of  a  gentleman  and  of  a  king.  Still  we  all  know  that  it  does 
not  take  a  great  effort  on  the  part  of  a  sovereign  to  make  people,  especially 
women,  think  him  very  delightful.  I  do  not,  therefore,  make  much  account  of 
King  William's  courtesy  and  bonhomie  in  estimating  his  character.  For  all  the 
service  he  has  done  to  Germany  let  him  have  full  thanks ;  but  I  cannot  bring 
myself  to  any  warmth  of  personal  admiration  for  him.  It  is  indeed  hard  to  look 
at  him  without  feeling  for  the  moment  some  sentiment  of  genuine  respect.  The 
fine  head  and  face,  with  its  noble  outlines  and  its  frank  pleasant  smile,  the  state- 
ly, dignified  form,  which  some  seventy-five  years  have  neither  bowed  nor  enfee- 
bled, make  the  King  look  like  some  splendid  old  paladin  of  the  court  of  Charle- 
magne. He  is,  indeed,  despite  his  years,  the  finest  physical  specimen  of  a  sov- 


S4  THE  KING  OF  PRUSSIA. 

ereign  Europe  just  now  can  show.  Compare  him  with  the  Emperor  Napoleon, 
so  many  years  his  junior — compare  his  soldierly  presence,  his  manly  bearing,  his 
clear  frank  eyes,  his  simple  and  sincere  expression,  with  the  prematurely  wasted 
and  crippled  frame,  the  face  blotched  and  haggard,  the  lack-lustre  eyes  which 
seem  always  striving  to  avoid  direct  encounter  with  any  other  glance,  the  sham- 
bling gait,  the  sinister  look  of  the  nephew  of  the  great  Bonaparte,  and  you  will 
say  that  the  Prussians  have  at  least  had  from  the  beginning  of  their  antagonism 
an  immense  advantage  over  their  rivals  in  the  figurehead  which  their  State  was 
enabled  to  exhibit.  But  I  cannot  make  a  hero  out  of  stout  King  William,  al- 
though he  has  bravery  enough  of  the  common,  military  kind,  to  suit  any  of  the 
heroes  of  the  "  Nibelungen  Lied."  He  never  would,  if  he  could,  render  any  ser- 
vice to  liberty  ;  he  cannot  understand  the  elements  and  first  principles  of  popular 
freedom  ;  to  him  the  people  is  always,  as  a  child,  to  be  kept  in  leading  string  s 
and  guided,  and,  if  at  all  boisterous  or  naughty,  smartly  birched  and  put  in  a 
dark  corner.  There  is  nothing  cruel  about  King  William  ;  that  is  to  say,  he 
would  not  willingly  hurt  any  human  creature,  and  is,  indeed,  rather  kind-hearted 
and  humane  than  otherwise.  He  is  as  utterly  incapable  of  the  mean  spites  and 
shabby  cruelties  of  the  great  Frederick,  whose  statue  stands  so  near  his  palace, 
as  he  is  incapable  of  the  savage  brutalities  and  indecencies  of  Frederick's 
father.  He  is,  in  fact,  simply  a  dull  old  disciplinarian,  saturated  through  and 
through  with  the  traditions  of  the  feudal  party  of  Germany,  his  highest  merit 
being  the  fact  that  he  keeps  his  word — that  he  is  "a  still  strong  man"  who 
"cannot  lie  ;"  his  noblest  fortune  being  the  happy  chance  which  called  on  him  to 
lead  his  country's  battles,  instead  of  leaving  him  free  to  contend  against,  and  per- 
haps for  the  time  to  crush,  his  country's  aspirations  after  domestic  freedom. 
Kind  Heaven  has  allowed  him  to  become  the  champion  and  the  representative 
of  German  unity — that  unity  which  is  Germany's  immediate  and  supreme  need, 
calling  for  the  postponement  of  every  other  claim  and  desire  ;  and  this  part  he 
has  played  like  a  man,  a  soldier,  and  a  king.  But  one  can  hardly  be  expected  to 
forget  all  the  past,  to  forget  what  Humboldt  and  Varnhagen  von  Ense  wrote, 
what  Jacobi  and  Waldeck  spoke,  what  King  William  did  in  1848,  and  what  he  said 
in  1861  ;  and  unless  we  forget  all  this  and  a  great  deal  more  to  the  same  effect,  we 
can  hardly  help  acknowledging  that  but  for  the  fortunate  conditions  which  al- 
lowed him  to  prove  himself  the  best  friend  of  German  unity,  he  would  probably 
have  proved  himself  the  worst  enemy  of  German  liberty. 


' 


VICTOR  EMANUEL,  KING  OF   ITALY. 


I  HAVE  before  me  just  now  a  little  silver  coin  picked  up  in  Savoy  very 
soon  after  Italy  had  become  a  kingdom,  and  Savoy  had  ceased  to  be  part 
of  it.  That  was  in  truth  the  only  thing  that  made  the  coin  in  any  way  specially 
interesting — the  fact  that  it  happened  to  be  in  chance  circulation  through  Savoy 
when  Savoy  had  no  longer  any  claim  to  it.  So,  for  that  little  scrap  of  melan- 
choly interest  I  have  since  kept  the  coin  in  my  purse,  and  it  has  made  many 
journeys  with  me  in  Europe  and  America ;  and  I  suppose  I  can  never  be  utterly 
destitute  while  it  remains  in  my  possession.  Now,  the  head  which  is  displayed 
upon  that  coin  is  not  of  kingly  mould.  The  mint  has  flattered  its  royal  master 
much  less  than  is  usual  with  such  portrait  painters.  An  English  silver  or  gold 
coin  of  this  year's  mintage  will  still  represent  Her  Majesty  Queen  Victoria  as 
a  beautiful  young  woman  of  twenty,  with  features  worthy  of  a  Greek  statue  and 
a  bust  shapely  enough  for  Dryden's  Iphigenia.  But  the  coin  of  King  Victor 
Emanuel  has  little  flattery  in  it.  There  is  the  coarse,  bulldog  cast  of  face  ; 
there  are  the  heavy  eye-brows,  the  unshapely  nose,  the  hideous  moustache,  the 
receding  forehead,  and  all  the  other  beauties  and  graces  of  the  "  bloat  King's  " 
countenance.  Certainly  the  face  on  the  coin  is  not  bloated  enough,  and  there 
is  too  little  animalism  displayed  in  the  back  of  the  head,  to  do  justice  to  the  first 
King  of  Italy.  Moreover,  the  coin  gives  somehow  the  idea  of  a  small  man,  and 
the  King  of  Italy  finds  it  not  easy  to  get  a  horse  strong  enough  to  bear  the  load 
of  Antony.  But  for  a  coin  it  is  a  wonderfully  honest  and  truthful  piece  of  work, 
quite  a  model  to  other  mints,  and  it  gave  when  it  was  issued  as  fair  an  idea  as 
a  little  piece  of  silver  could  well  give  of  the  head  and  face  of  Europe's  most  ill- 
favored  sovereign. 

What  a  chance  Victor  Emanuel  had  of  being  a  hero  of  romance  !  No  king 
perhaps  ever  had  such  a  chance  before,  and  missed  it  so  persistently.  Europe 
seemed  at  one  time  determined,  whether  he  would  or  no,  to  make  a  hero,  a 
knight,  a  preux  chevalier,  out  of  the  SOH  of  Charles  Albert.  Not  Charles  Ed- 
ward, the  brilliant,  unfortunate  Stuart  himself,  not  Gustavus  Adolphus  eveu 
seemed  to  have  been  surrounded  by  such  a  romantic  rainbow  of  romance  and 
of  hope.  When,  after  the  crowning  disaster  of  Novara,  Victor  Emanuel's  weak, 
vacillating,  unlucky,  and  not  very  trustworthy  father  abdicated  the  crown  of 
Sardinia  in  favor  of  his  son,  the  latter  seemed  in  the  eyes  of  liberal  Europe  to 
represent  not  merely  the  hopes  of  all  true  Italians,  but  the  best  hopes  of  liberty 
and  progress  all  over  the  world.  There  was  even  then  a  vague  idea  afloat 
through  Europe — although  Europe  did  not  know  how  Cavour  had  already  ac- 
cepted the  idea  as  a  principle  of  action — that  with  her  tremendous  defeats  Pied- 
mont had  won  the  right  to  hoist  the  standard  of  one  Italy.  This  then  was  the 
cause  which  the  young  King  was  taken  to  represent.  He  had  been  baptized  in 
blood  to  that  cause.  He  represented  Italy  united  and  free — free  from  Austrian 
and  Pope,  from  political  and  religious  despotism.  He  was  at  all  events  no  car- 
pet knight.  He  had  fought  bravely  on  more  than  one  fearful  field  of  battle ;  he 
had  looked  on  death  closely  and  undismayed  ;  he  had  been  wounded  in  fighting 
for  Italy  against  the  Austrian.  It  was  said  of  the  young  sovereign — who  was 
only  Duke  of  Savoy  then — that  on  the  night  of  Novara,  when  all  was  over  save 
retreat  and  humiliation,  he  shook  his  dripping  sword  at  the  ranks  of  the  con- 
quering Austrians  and  exclaimed,  "Italy  shall  make  herself  for  all  that!" 


56  VICTOR  EMANUEL,  KING  OF  ITALY. 

Probably  the  story  is  substantially  true,  although  Victor  Emanuel  may  perhaps 
have  used  stronger  expressions  if  he  spoke  at  all ;  for  no  one  ever  doubted  his 
courage  and  coolness  in  the  hour  of  danger.  But  true  or  not,  the  anecdote  ex- 
actly illustrated  the  light  in  which  the  world  was  prepared  to  regard  the  young 
sovereign  of  Sardinia — as  the  hope  of  Italy  and  of  freedom,  the  representative 
of  a  defeat  which  he  was  determined  and  destined  to  convert  into  a  victory. 

Not  many  years  after  this,  and  while  the  lustre  of  his  misfortunes  and  the 
brilliancy  of  his  hopes  still  surrounded  him,  King  Victor  Emanuel  visited  Eng- 
land. He  was  welcomed  everywhere  with  a  cordiality  of  personal  interest  and 
admiration  not  often  accorded  by  any  people  to  a  foreign  king.  Decidedly  it 
was  a  hard  thing  to  look  at  him  and  yet  retain  the  thought  of  a  hero  of  romance. 
He  was  not  then  nearly  so  bloated  and  burly  as  he  is  now ;  and  he  was  at  least 
some  dozen  or  fourteen  years  younger.  But  even  then  how  marvellously  ill- 
favored  he  was  ;  how  rough  and  coarse-looking;  how  unattractive  in  manner; 
how  brusque  and  uncouth  in  gesture  and  bearing  ;  how  liable  to  fits  of  an  ap- 
parently stolid  silence  ;  how  utterly  devoid  of  grace  and  dignity  !  His  huge 
straw-colored  moustache,  projecting  about  half  a  foot  on  each  side  of  his  face, 
was  as  unsightly  a  piece  of  manly  decoration  as  ever  royal  countenance  dis- 
played. Yet  the  public  tried  to  forget  all  those  external  defects  and  still  regard 
him  as  a  hero  of  romance  somehow,  anyhow.  So  fully  was  he  believed  to  be  a 
representative  of  civil  and  religious  freedom  in  Italy,  that  one  English  religious 
society  of  some  kind — I  forget  which  it  was — actually  went  the  length  of  pre- 
senting an  address  to  him,  in  which  they  flourished  about  the  errors  of  Popery 
as  freely  as  if  they  were  appealing  to  an  Oliver  Cromwell  or  Frederick  the  Great. 
Cavour  gave  them  very  neatly  and  tersely  the  snub  that  their  ignorance  and 
presumption  so  well  deserved  ;  and  their  address  did  not  obtain  an  honored 
place  among  Victor  Emanuel's  memorials  of  his  visit  to  England. 

He  was  very  hospitably  entertained  by  Queen  Victoria,  who  is  said  to  have 
suffered  agonies  of  martrydom  from  her  guest's  everlasting  cigar — the  good  soul 
detests  tobacco  as  much  as  King  James  himself  did — and  even  more  from  his 
occasional  outbursts  of  roystering  compliment  and  canteen  love-making  toward 
the  ladies  of  her  staid  and  modest  court.  One  of  the  household  edicts,  I  think, 
of  Queen  Elizabeth's  court  was  that  no  gallant  must  "toy  with  the  maids,  under 
pain  of  fourpence."  Poor  Victor  Emanuel's  slender  purse  would  have  had  to 
bear  a  good  many  deductions  of  fourpence,  people  used  to  hint,  if  this  penal  de- 
cree had  prevailed  in  his  time  at  Windsor  or  Osborne.  But  Queen  Victoria  was 
very  patient  and  friendly.  Cavour  has  left  some  pleasant  descriptions  of  her 
easy,  unaffected  friendliness  toward  himself.  Guizot,  it  will  be  remembered,  has 
described  her  as  the  stiffest  of  the  stiff,  freezing  into  petrifaction  a  whole  silent 
circle  by  her  invincible  coldness  and  formality.  I  cannot  pretend  to  reconcile 
the  conflicting  accounts  of  these  two  eminent  visitors,  but  certainly  Cavour  has 
drawn  some  animated  and  very  attractive  pictures  of  Queen  Victoria's  almost 
girlish  good-humor  and  winning  familiarity.  However  that  may  be,  the  whole 
heart  of  free  England  warmed  to  Victor  Emanuel,  and  was  ready  to  dub  him  in 
advance  the  chosen  knight  of  liberty,  the  St.  George  of  Italy,  before  whose  resist- 
less sword  every  dragon  of  despotism  and  superstition  was  to  grovel  in  the  dust. 

So  the  King  went  his  way,  and  the  next  thing  the  world  heard  of  him  was 
that  he  was  in  league  with  Louis  Napoleon  against  the  Austrian,  and  that  the 
child  his  daughter  was  to  be  married  to  the  obese  and  elderly  Prince  Napoleon, 
whose  eccentric  genius,  varied  accomplishments,  and  thrilling  eloquence  were 
then  unrecognized  and  unknown.  Then  came  the  triumphs  of  Magenta  and  Sol- 


VICTOR  EMANUEL,  KING  OF  ITALY.  57 

ferino,  and  it  was  made  plain  once  more  to  the  world  that  Victor  Emanael  had 
the  courage  of  a  true  soldier.  He  actually  took  a  personal  share  of  the  fighting 
when  the  Italians  were  in  action.  He  did  not  sit  on  his  horse,  far  away  from  the 
bullets,  like  his  imperial  ally,  and  direct  the  movements  of  the  army  by  muttering 
"  C'est  bien"  when  an  aide-de-camp  galloped  up  to  announce  to  him  as  a  piece 
of  solemn  farce  that  this  or  that  general  had  already  accomplished  this  or  that 
operation.  No  ;  Victor  Emanuel  took  his  share  of  the  fighting  like  a  king.  In 
the  affair  of  San  Martino  he  led  an  attack  himself,  and  encouraged  his  soldiers 
by  bellowing  in  stentorian  voice  quite  a  clever  joke  for  a  king,  just  as  he  was 
about  to  charge.  A  crack  regiment  of  French  Zouaves  (the  French  Zouaves  were 
soldiers  in  those  days)  was  so  delighted  with  the  Sardinian  King  that  it  elected 
him  a  corporal  of  the  regiment  on  the  field  of  battle — a  quite  wonderful  piece  of 
compliment  from  a  Zouave  regiment  to  a  foreign  sovereign.  Not  so  long  before 
had  Lamoriciere  declared  that  "Italians  don't  fight,"  and  here  was  a  crack 
Zouave  regiment  enthusiastic  about  the  fighting  capacity  of  an  Italian  King. 
The  irony  of  fate,  it  will  be  remembered,  decreed  soon  after  that  Lamoriciere 
should  himself  lay  down  his  arms  before  an  Italian  general  and  Italian  soldiers. 

Out  of  that  war,  then,  Victor  Emanuel  emerged  still  a  hero.  But  the  world 
soon  began  to  think  that  he  was  only  a  hero  in  the  field.  The  sale  of  Savoy  and 
Nice  much  shocked  the  public  sentiment  of  Europe.  The  house  of  Savoy,  as 
an  English  orator  observed,  had  sprung  from  the  womb  of  the  mountains  which 
the  unworthy  heir  of  Savoy  sold  to  a  stranger.  As  the  world  had  given  to  Vic- 
tor Emanuel  the  credit  of  virtues  which  he  never  possessed,  it  was  now  ready  to 
lay  on  him  all  the  burden  of  deeds  which  were  not  his.  Whether  the  cession  of 
Savoy  was  right  or  wrong,  Victor  Emanuel  was  not  to  blame,  under  the  hard  cir- 
cumstances, for  withdrawing,  according  to  the  first  Napoleon's  phrase,  "  sous 
les  draps  dun  rot  constitutionnel"  and  allowing  his  ministers  to  do  the  best  they 
could.  In  fact,  the  thing  was  a  necessity  of  the  situation.  Napoleon  the  Third 
had  to  make  the  demand  to  satisfy  his  own  people,  who  never  quite  "seemed  to 
see"  the  war  for  Italy.  The  Sardinian  ministers  had  to  yield  to  the  demand  to 
satisfy  Napoleon  the  Third.  Had  Prussia  been  a  raw,  weak  power  in  Septem- 
ber, 1866,  she  must  have  ceded  some  territory  to  France.  Sardinia  or  Italy 
was  raw  and  weak  in  1860,  and  had  no  choice  but  to  submit.  There  were  two 
things  to  be  said  for  the  bargain.  First,  Italy  got  good  value  for  it.  Next,  the 
Savoyards  and  Nizzards  never  were  good  Italians.  They  rather  piqued  them- 
selves on  not  being  Italians.  The  Savoy  delegates  would  not  speak  Italian  in 
the  old  Turin  Parliament.  The  ministers  had  to  answer  their  French  "  interpel- 
lations "  in  French. 

Still  all  this  business  did  an  immense  harm  to  the  reputation  of  King  Victor 
Emanuel.  He  had  acted  like  a  quiet,  sensible  man — not  in  any  way  like  a  hero 
of  romance,  and  Europe  desired  to  see  in  him  a  hero  of  romance.  Then  he  did 
not  show  himself,  people  said,  very  grateful  to  Garibaldi  when  the  latter  opened 
the  way  for  the  expulsion  of  the  Bourbons  from  Naples,  and  did  so  much  to 
crown  Victor  Emanuel  King  of  Italy.  Now  I  am  a  warm  admirer  of  Garibaldi. 
I  think  his  very  weaknesses  are  noble  and  heroic.  There  is  carefully  preserved 
among  the  best  household  treasures  of  my  family  a  vine  leaf  which  Garibaldi 
once  plucked  and  gave  me  as  a  souvenir  for  my  wife.  But  I  confess  I  should 
not  like  to  be  king  of  a  new  monarchy  partly  made  by  Garibaldi  and  with  Gari- 
baldi for  a  subject.  The  whole  policy  of  Garibaldi  proceeded  on  the  gallant  and 
generous  assumption  that  Italy  alone  ought  to  be  able  to  conquer  all  her  ene- 
mies. We  have  since  seen  how  little  Italy  availed  against  a  mere  fragment  of 


58  VICTOR  EMANUEL,  KING  OF  ITALY. 

the  military  power  of  Austria — that  power  which  Prussia  crushed  like  a  nutshell. 
Events,  I  think,  have  vindicated  the  slower  and  less  assuming  policy  of  Victor 
Emanuel,  or,  I  should  say,  the  policy  which  Victor  Emanuel  consented  to  adopt 
at  the  bidding  of  Cavour. 

But  all  the  same  the  prestige  of  Victor  Emanuel  was  gone.  Then  Europe 
began  to  look  at  the  man  coolly,  and  estimate  him  without  glamour  and  with- 
out romance.  Then  it  began  to  listen  to  the  very  many  stories  against  him 
which  his  enemies  could  tell.  Alas  !  these  stories  were  not  all  untrue.  Of 
course  there  were  grotesque  and  hideous  exaggerations.  There  are  in  Europe 
some  three  or  four  personages  of  the  highest  rank  whom  scandal  delights  to  as- 
sail, and  of  whom  it  tells  stories  which  common  sense  and  common  feeling  alike 
compel  us  to  reject.  It  would  be  wholly  impossible  even  to  hint  at  some  of  the 
charges  which  scandal  in  Europe  persistently  heaped  on  Victor  Emanuel,  the 
Emperor  Napoleon  III.,  Prince  Napoleon,  and  the  reigning  King  of  the  Neth- 
erlands. If  one-half  the  stones  told  of  these  four  men  were  true,  then  Europe 
would  hold  at  present  four  personages  of  the  highest  rank  who  might  have  tu- 
tored Caligula  in  the  arts  of  recondite  debauchery,  and  have  looked  down  on 
Alexander  the  Sixth  as  a  prudish  milksop.  But  I  think  no  reasonable  person 
will  have  much  difficulty  in  sifting  the  probable  truth  out  of  the  monstrous  exag- 
gerations. No  one  can  doubt  that  Victor  Emanuel  is  a  man  of  gross  habits 
and  tastes,  and  is,  or  was,  addicted  to  coarse  and  ignoble  immoralities.  "  The 
manners  of  a  mosstrooper  and  the  morality  of  a  he  goat,"  was  the  description 
which  my  friend  John  Francis  Maguire,  the  distinguished  Roman  Catholic  mem- 
ber of  the  House  of  Commons,  gave,  in  one  of  his  Parliamentary  speeches,  of 
King  Victor  Emanuel.  This  was  strong  language,  and  it  was  the  language 
of  a  prejudiced  though  honest  political  and  religious  partisan  ;  but  it  was  not,  all 
things  considered,  a  very  bad  description.  Moreover,  it  was  mildness,  it  was 
compliment — nay,  it  was  base  flattery — when  compared  with  the  hideous  accusa- 
tions publicly  and  distinctly  made  against  Victor  Emanuel  by  one  of  Garibaldi's 
sons,  not  to  speak  of  other  accusers,  and  privately  whispered  by  slanderous  gos- 
sip all  over  Europe.  One  peculiarity  about  Victor  Emanuel  worthy  of  notice  is 
that  he  has  no  luxury  in  his  tastes.  He  is,  I  believe,  abstemious  in  eating  and 
drinking,  caring  only  for  the  homeliest  fare.  He  has  sat  many  times  at  the  head  of 
a  grand  state  banquet,  where  the  rarest  viands,  the  most  superb  wines  were  abun- 
dant, and  never  removed  the  napkin  from  his  plate,  never  tasted  a  morsel  or 
emptied  a  glass.  He  had  had  his  plain  fare  at  an  earlier  hour,  and  cared  noth- 
ing for  the  triumphs  of  cookery  or  the  choicest  products  of  the  vine.  He  has 
thus  sat,  in  good-humored  silence,  his  hand  leaning  on  the  hilt  of  his  sword, 
through  a  long,  long  banquet  of  seemingly  endless  courses,  which  to  him  was  a 
pageant,  a  ceremonial  duty,  and  nothing  more.  He  delights  in  chamois-hunt- 
ing— in  hunting  of  almost  any  kind — in  horses,  in  dogs,  and  in  women  of  a  cer- 
tain coarse  and  gross  description.  There  is  nothing  of  the  Richelieu  or  Lauzun, 
or  even  the  Francis  the  First,  about  the  dull,  I  had  almost  said  harmless,  im- 
moralities of  the  King  of  Italy.  Men  in  private  and  public  station  have  done 
far  greater  harm,  caused  far  more  misery  than  ever  he  did,  and  yet  escaped 
almost  unwhipt  of  justice.  The  man  has  (or  had,  for  people  say  he  is  reformed 
now)  the  coarse,  easily-gratified  tastes  of  a  sailor  turned  ashore  after  a  long 
cruise — and  such  tastes  are  not  kingly  ;  and  that  is  about  all  that  one  feels  fairly 
warranted  in  saying  either  to  condemn  or  to  palliate  the  vices  of  Victor  Emanuel. 
He  absolutely  wants  all  element  of  greatness.  He  is  not  even  a  great  soldier. 
He  has  boisterous  animal  courage,  and  finds  the  same  excitement  in  leading  a 


VICTOR  EMANUEL,  KING  OF  ITALY.  59 

charge  <t»  in  hunting  the  chamois.  But  he  has  nothing  even  of  the  very  moderate 
degree  of  military  capacity  possessed  by  a  dashing  sabreur  like  Murat.  It 
seems  beyond  doubt  that  it  was  the  infatuation  he  displayed  in  attempting  the 
personal  direction  of  affairs  which  led  to  the  breakdown  at  Custozza.  The  man 
is,  in  fact,  like  one  of  the  rough  jagers  described  in  Schiller's  "  Wallenstein's 
Camp  " — just  this,  and  nothing  more.  When  Garibaldi  was  in  the  zenith  of  his 
fortunes  and  fame  in  1860,  Victor  Emanuel  declared  privately  to  a  friend  that 
the  height  of  his  ambition  would  be  to  follow  the  gallant  guerilla  leader  as  a 
mere  soldier  in  the  field.  Certainly,  when  the  two  men  entered  Naples 
together,  every  one  must  have  felt  that  their  places  ought  to  have  been  reversed. 
How  like  a  king,  an  ideal  king — a  king  of  poetry  and  painting  and  romance — • 
looked  Garibaldi  in  the  superb  serenity  of  his  untaught  grace  and  sweetness  and 
majesty.  How  rude,  uncouth,  clownish,  even  vulgar,  looked  the  big,  brawny,  un- 
gainly trooper  whom  people  had  to  salute  as  King.  When  Garibaldi  went  to 
visit  the  hospitals  where  the  wounded  of  the  short  struggle  were  lying,  how 
womanlike  he  was  in  his  sympathetic  tenderness  ;  how  light  and  noiseless  was 
his  step  ;  how  gentle  his  every  gesture  ;  what  a  sweet  word  of  genial  compas- 
sion or  encouragement  he  had  for  every  sufferer.  The  burly  King  strode  and 
clattered  along  like  a  dragoon  swaggering  through  the  crowd  at  a  country  fair. 
Not  that  Victor  Emanuel  wanted  good  nature,  but  that  his  rude  pliysique  had 
so  little  in  it  of  the  sympathetic  or  the  tender. 

Was  there  ever  known  such  a  whimsical,  harmless,  odd  saturnalia  as  Naples 
presented  during  those  extraordinary  days  ?  I  am  thinking  novr  chiefly  of  the 
men  who,  mostly  uncalled-for,  "  rallied  round  "  the  Revolution,  and  came  from 
all  manner  of  holes  and  corners  to  offer  their  services  to  Garibaldi,  and  to  ex- 
hibit themselves  in  the  capacity  of  freedom's  friends,  soldiers,  and  scholars. 
Hardly  a  hero,  or  crackbrain,  or  rantipole  in  Europe,  one  would  think,  but  must 
have  been  then  on  exhibition  somewhere  in  Naples.  Father  Gavazzi  harangued 
from  one  position  ;  Alexandre  Dumas,  accompanied  by  his  faithful  "  Admiral 
Emile,"  directed  affairs  from  another.  Edwin  James,  then  a  British  criminal 
lawyer  and  popular  member  of  Parliament,  was  to  be  seen  tearing  round  in  a 
sort  of  semi-mUitary  costume,  with  pistols  stuck  in  his  belt.  The  worn,  thought- 
ful, melancholy  face  of  Mazzini  was,  for  a  short  time  at  least,  to  be  seen  in 
juxtaposition  with  the  cockney  visage  of  an  ambitious  and  restless  common 
councilman  from  the  city  of  London,  who  has  lived  all  his  life  since  on  the 
glorious  memories  and  honors  of  that  good  time.  The  House  of  Lords,  the 
House  of  Commons,  and  the  Guildhall  of  London  were  lavishly  represented 
there.  Men  like  Tiirr,  the  dashing  Hungarian  and  Mieroslawski,  the  "  Red  " 
leader  of  Polish  revolution — men  to  whom  battle  and  danger  were  as  the  breath 
of  their  nostrils — were  buttonholed  and  advised  by  heavy  British  vestrymen 
and  pert  Parisian  journalists.  Hardly  any  man  or  woman  entered  Naples  from 
a  foreign  country  at  that  astonishing  time  who  did  not  believe  that  he  or  she 
had  some  special  counsel  to  give,  which  Victor  Emanuel  or  Garibaldi  or  some 
one  of  their  immediate  staff  was  bound  to  listen  to  and  accept.  Woman's 
Rights  were  pretty  well  represented  in  that  pellmell.  There  was  a  Countess 
something  or  other — French,  they  said — who  wore  short  petticoats  and  trousers, 
had  silver-mounted  pistols  in  her  belt  and  silver  spurs  on  her  heels,  and  was 
generally  believed  to  have  done  wonders  in  "the  field" — what  field  no  one 
would  stop  to  ask.  There  was  Jessie  Mario  White,  modest,  pleasant,  fair- 
haired  woman,  wife  of  a  gallant  gentleman  and  soldier — Jessie  White,  who  made 
no  exhibition  of  herself,  but  did  then  and  since  faithful  and  valuable  work  for 


CO  VICTOR  EMANUEL,  KING  OF  ITALY. 

Italian  wounded,  such  as  Italy  ought  not  soon  to  forget.  There  was  Mrs. 
Chambers — Mrs.  Colonel  Chambers — the  Mrs.  "Putney  Giles"  of  DisraelPs 
''Lothair" — very  prominent  everywhere,  sounding  the  special  eulogies  of  Gari- 
balda  with  tireless  tongue,  and  utterly  overshadowing  her  quiet  husband,  who  (the 
husband  I  mean)  afterwards  stood  by  Garibaldi's  side  at  Aspromonte.  Exeter 
Hall  had  sent  out  powerful  delegations,  in  the  firm  faith  apparently  that  Gari- 
baldi would  at  their  request  order  Naples  forthwith  to  break  up  its  shrines  and 
images  of  saints  and  become  Protestant ;  and  that  Naples  would  at  once  obey. 
Never  was  sucli  a  time  of  dreams  and  madness  and  fussiness,  of  splendid  aspira- 
tions and  silly  self-seeking  vanity,  of  chivalry  and  daring,  and  true  wisdom  and 
nonsense.  It  was  a  time  naturally  of  many  disappointments ;  and  one  disap- 
pointment to  almost  everybody  was  His  Majesty  King  Victor  Emanuel.  His 
Majesty  seemed  at  least  not  much  to  care  about  the  whole  affair  from  the  begin- 
ning. He  went  through  it  as  if  he  didn't  quite  understand  what  it  was  all  about, 
and  didn't  think  it  worth  the  trouble  of  trying.  People  who  saw  him  at  that 
splendid  moment  when,  the  forces  of  Garibaldi  joining  with  the  regular  Sardinian 
troops  after  all  had  been  won,  Garibaldi  and  the  King  met  for  the  first  time  in 
that  crisis,  and  the  soldier  hailed  the  sovereign  as  "King  of  Italy!" — people 
who  saw  and  studied  that  picturesque  historic  meeting  have  told  me  that  there 
was  no  more  emotion  of  any  kind  on  Victor  Emanuel's  face  than  if  he  were  re- 
ceiving a  formal  address  from  the  mayor  of  a  country  town.  "  I  thank  you," 
were  his  only  words  of  reply ;  and  I  am  assured  that  it  was  not  "  I  thank  you" 
with  emphasis  on  the  last  word  to  indicate  that  the  King  acknowledged  how 
much  he  owed  to  his  great  soldier ;  but  simply  "I  thank  you,"  as  he  might  have 
thanked  a  groom  who  opened  a  stable  door  for  him.  Perhaps  the  very  depth 
and  grandeur  of  the  King's  emotions  rendered  him  incapable  of  finding  any  ex- 
pression for  them.  Let  us  hope  so.  But  I  have  had  the  positive  assurances  of 
some  who  saw  the  scene,  that  if  any  such  emotions  were  felt  the  royal  counte- 
nance concealed  them  as  completely  as  though  they  never  had  been. 

In  truth,  I  presume  that  the  whole  thing  really  was  a  terrible  bore  to  the 
royal  Rawdon  Crawley,  who  found  himself  compelled  by  cursed  spite  to  play  the 
part  of  a  patriot  king.  The  Pope,  the  ultramontane  bishops,  and  the  ultramon- 
tane press  have  always  been  ringing  fierce  changes  on  the  inordinate  and  wicked 
ambition  of  Victor  Emanuel.  I  am  convinced  the  poor  man  has  no  more  ambi- 
tion than  his  horse.  If  he  could  have  chalked  out  his  own  career  for  himself,  he 
would  probably  have  asked  nothing  better  than  to  be  allowed  to  devote  his  life 
to  chamois-hunting,  with  a  hunter's  homely  fare,  and  the  companionship  of  a  few 
friends  (some  fat  ladies  among  the  number)  with  whom  he  could  talk  and  make 
jokes  in  the  patois  of  Piedmont.  This,  and  perhaps  a  battle-field  and  a  dashing 
charge  every  now  and  then,  would  probably  have  realized  his  dreams  of  the 
summum  bonum.  But  some  implacable  destiny,  embodied  in  the  form  of  a  Ca- 
vour  or  a  Garibaldi,  was  always  driving  on  the  stout  King  and  bidding  him  get 
up  and  attempt  great  things — be  a  patriot  and  a  hero.  Fancy  Rawdon  Crawley 
impelled,  or  rather  compelled  by  the  inexorable  command  of  Becky  his  wife,  to 
go  forth  in  quest  of  the  Holy  Grail,  and  one  may  perhaps  be  able  to  guess  what 
Victor  Emanuel's  perplexity  and  reluctance  were  when  he  was  bidden  to  set  out 
for  the  accomplishment  of  the  regeneration  of  Italy.  "  Honor  to  those  to  whom 
honor  is  due  ;  honor  to  old  Mother  Baubo,"  says  some  one  in  "  Faust."  Honor 
on  that  principle,  then,  to  King  Victor  Emanuel.  He  did  get  up  and  go  forth 
and  undertake  to  bear  his  part  in  the  adventure.  And  here  seriously  let  me 
speak  of  the  one  high  merit  of  Victor  Emanuel's  career.  He  is  not  a  hero ;  he 


VICTOR  EMANUEL,  KING  OF  ITALY.  61 

is  not  a  statesman  or  even  a  politician  ;  he  is  not  a  patriot  in  any  grand,  exalted 
sense.  He  would  Tike  to  be  idle,  and  perhaps  to  be  despotic.  But  he  has 
proved  that  he  understands  the  true  responsibilities  and  duties  of  a  constitu- 
tional King  better  than  many  sovereigns  of  higher  intellect  and  belter  character. 
He  always  did  go,  or  at  least  endeavor  to  go,  where  the  promptings  of  his  min- 
isters, the  commands  of  his  one  imperious  minister,  or  the  voice  of  the  country 
directed.  There  must  be  a  great  struggle  in  the  mind  of  Victor  Emanuel  be- 
tween his  duty  as  a  king  and  his  duty  as  a  Roman  Catholic,  when  he  enters  into 
antagonism  with  the  Pope.  Beyond  doubt  Victor  Emanuel  is  a  superstitious 
Catholic.  Of  late  years  his  constitution  has  once  or  twice  threatened  to  give 
way,  and  he  is  probably  all  the  more  anxious  to  be  reconciled  with  the  Church. 
Perhaps  he  would  be  glad  enough  to  lay  down  the  load  of  royalty  altogether  and 
become  again  an  accepted  and  devoted  Catholic,  and  hunt  his  chamois  with  a 
quieted  conscience.  But  still,  impelled  by  what  must  be  some  sort  of  patriotism 
and  sense  of  duty,  he  accepts  his  uncongenial  part  of  constitutional  King,  and 
strives  to  do  all  that  the  voice  of  his  people  demands.  It  is  probable  that 'at  no 
time  was  the  King  personally  much  attached  to  his  illustrious  minister  Cavour. 
The  genius  and  soul  of  Cavour  were  too  oppressively  imperial,  high-reaching, 
and  energetic  for  the  homely,  plodding  King.  With  all  his  external  levity  Count 
Cavour  was  terribly  in  earnest,  and  he  must  often  have  seemed  a  dreadful  bore 
to  his  sovereign.  Cavour  knew  himself  the  master,  and  did  not  always  take 
pains  to  conceal  his  knowledge.  He  would  sometimes  adopt  the  most  direct 
and  vigorous  language  in  remonstrating  with  the  King  if  the  latter  did  not  act  on 
valuable  advice  at  the  right  moment.  Sometimes,  when  things  went  decidedly 
against  Cavour's  wishes,  the  minister  would  take  the  monarch  to  task  more 
roundly  than  even  the  most  good-natured  monarchs  are  likely  to  approve. 
When  Napoleon  the  Third  disappointed  Cavour  and  all  Italy  by  the  sudden 
peace  of  Villafranca,  I  have  heard  that  Cavour  literally  denounced  Victor  Eman- 
uel for  consenting  to  the  arrangement.  Count  Arrivabene,  an  able  writer,  has 
given  a  very  vivid  and  interesting  description  of  Cavour's  demeanor  when  he 
reached  the  Sardinian  headquarters  on  his  way  to  an  interview  with  the  King 
and  learned  what  had  been  done.  He  was  literally  in  a  "tearing  rage."  He 
tore  off  his  hat  and  dashed  it  down,  he  clenched  his  hands,  he  stamped  wildly, 
gesticulated  furiously,  became  red  and  purple,  foamed  at  the  mouth,  and  grew 
inarticulate  for  very  passion.  He  believed  that  he  and  Italy  were  sold — as  in- 
deed they  were  ;  and  it  was  while  this  temper  was  yet  on  him  that  he  went  to 
see  the  King,  and  denounced  him,  as  I  have  said.  Now  this  sort  of  thing  cer- 
tainly could  not  have  been  agreeable  to  Victor  Emanuel  ;  and  yet  he  patiently 
accepted  Cavour  as  a  kind  of  glorious  necessity.  He  never  sought,  as  many 
another  king  in  such  duresse  would  have  done,  to  weaken  his  minister's  influ- 
ence and  authority  by  showing  open  sullenness  and  dissatisfaction.  Ratazzi, 
with  his  pliable  ways  and  his  entire  freedom  from  any  wearisome  earnest- 
ness or  devotion  to  any  particular  cause,  was  naturally  a  far  more  companiona- 
ble and  agreeable  minister  for  the  King  than  the  untiring  and  imperious  Cavour. 
Accordingly,  it  was  well  known  that  Ratazzi  was  more  of  a  personal  favorite  ;  but 
the  King  never  seems  to  have  acted  otherwise  than  loyally  and  honestly  to- 
ward Cavour.  Ricasoli  was  all  but  intolerable  to  the  King.  Ricasoli  was 
proud  and  stern  ;  and  he  was,  moreover,  a  somewhat  rigid  moralist,  which  Ca- 
vour hardly  professed  to  be.  The  King  writhed  under  the  government  of  Ri- 
casoli, and  yet,  despite  all  that  was  at  the  time  whispered,  he  cannot,  I  think,  be 
fairly  accused  of  having  done  anything  personally  to  rid  himself  of  an  obnoxious 


62  VICTOR  EMANUEL,  KING  OF  ITALY. 

minister.  Indeed,  the  single  merit  of  Victor  Emanuel's  character,  if  we  put  aside 
the  element  of  personal  courage,  is  its  rough  integrity.  He  is  a  galantuomo,  an 
honest  man — in  that  sense,  a  man  of  his  word.  He  gave  his  word  to  constitu- 
tional government  and  to  Italy,  and  he  appears  to  have  kept  the  word  in  each 
case  according  to  his  lights. 

But  his  popularity  among  his  subjects,  the  interest  felt  in  him  by  the  world, 
have  long  been  steadily  on  the  wane.  Years  and  years  ago  he  ceased  to  retain 
the  faintest  gleam  of  the  halo  of  romance  that  once  was,  despite  of  himself, 
thrown  around  him.  His  people  care  little  or  nothing  for  him.  Why,  indeed, 
should  they  care  anything?  The  military  prestige  which  he  had  won,  such  as  it 
was,  vanished  at  Custozza,  and  it  was  his  evil  destiny,  hardly  his  fault,  to  be  al- 
most always  placed  in  a  position  of  antagonism  to  the  one  only  Italian  who  since 
Cavour's  death  had  an  enthusiastic  following  in  Italy.  Aspromonte  was  a  ca- 
lamity for  Victor  Emanuel.  One  can  hardlv  blame  him  ;  one  can  hardly  see 
how  he  could  have  done  otherwise.  The  greatest  citizen  or  soldier  in  America 
or  England,  if  he  attempted  to  levy  an  army  of  his  own,  and  make  war  from 
American  or  English  territory  upon  a  neighboring  State,  would  surely  have  seen 
his  bands  dispersed  and  found  himself  arrested  by  order  of  his  government ;  and 
it  would  never  have  occurred  to  any  one  to  think  that  the  government  was 
doing  a  harsh,  ungrateful,  or  improper  thing.  It  would  be  the  necessary,  right- 
ful execution  of  a  disagreeable  duty,  and  that  is  all.  But  the  conditions  of  Gari- 
baldi's case,  like  the  one  splendid  service  he  had  rendered,  were  so  entirely  ab- 
normal and  without  precedent,  the  whole  thing  was  from  first  to  last  so  much 
more  a  matter  of  national  sentiment  than  of  political  law,  that  national  senti- 
ment insisted  on  judging  Garibaldi  and  the  King  in  this  case  too,  and  at  least 
a  powerful,  passionate  minority  declared  Victor  Emanuel  an  ingrate  and  a  trai- 
tor. Mentana  was  almost  as  bad  for  the  King  as  Custozza.  The  voice  of  the 
country,  so  far  as  one  could  understand  its  import,  seemed  to  declare  that  when 
the  King  had  once  ordered  the  Italian  troops  to  cross  the  frontier,  he  should 
have  ordered  them  to  go  on  ;  that  if  they  had  actually  occupied  Rome,  France 
would  have  recognized  accomplished  facts  ;  that  as  it  was,  Italy  offended  France 
and  the  Pope  by  stepping  over  the  barrier  of  the  convention  of  September,  only 
to  humiliate  herself  by  stepping  back  again  without  having  accomplished  any- 
thing. Certainly  the  policy  of  the  Italian  Government  at  such  a  crisis  was  weak, 
miserable,  even  contemptible.  Then  indeed  Italy  might  well  have  exclaimed, 
'•  Oh  for  one  hour  of  Cavour  !  "  One  hour  of  the  man  of  genius  and  courage, 
who,  if  he  had  moved  forward,  would  not  have  darted  back  again  !  Perhaps  it 
was  unfair  to  hold  the  King  responsible  for  the  mistakes  of  his  ministers.  But 
when  a  once  popular  King  has  to  be  pleaded  for  on  that  sole  ground,  it  is  pretty 
clear  that  there  is  an  end  to  his  popularity.  So  with  Victor  Emanuel.  The 
world  began  to  forget  him  ;  his  subjects  began  to  despise  him.  Even  the  thrill- 
ing events  that  have  lately  taken  place  in  Italy,  the  sudden  crowning  of  the  na- 
tional edifice — the  realization  of  that  hope  which  so  long  appeared  but  a  dream — 
which  Cavour  himself  declared  would  be  the  most  slow  and  difficult  to  realize  of 
all  Italy's  hopes — even  the  possession  of  Rome  hardly  seems  to  have  brought 
back  one  ray  of  the  old  popularity  on  the  heavy  head  of  King  Victor  Emanuel. 
Again  the  wonderful  combination  of  good  luck  and  bad — the  good  fortune  which 
brought  to  the  very  door  of  the  house  of  Savoy  the  sudden  realization  of  its 
highest  dreams — the  misfortune  which  allowed  that  house  no  share  in  the  true 
credit  of  having  accomplished  its  destiny.  What  had  Victor  Emanuel  to  do 
with  the  sudden  juncture  of  events  which  enabled  Italy  to  take  possession  of  her 


VICTOR  EMANUZL,  KING  OF  ITALY.  63 

capital  ?  Nothing  whatever.  His  peopl-e  have  no  more  reason  to  thank  him  fer 
Rome  than  they  have  to  thank  him  for  the  rain  or  the  sunshine,  the  olive  and 
the  vine.  The  King  seems  to  have  felt  all  this.  His  short  visit  to  Rome,  and 
the  formal  act  of  taking  possession,  may  perhaps  have  been  made  so  short  be- 
cause Victor  Emanuel  knew  that  he  had  little  right  to  claim  any  honors  or  ex- 
pect any  popular  enthusiasm.  He  entered  Rome  one  day  and  went  away  The 
next.  I  confess,  however,  that  I  should  not  wonder  if  the  visit  was  made  so 
short  merely  because  the  whole  thing  was  a  bore  to  the  honest  King,  and  he 
could  only  make  up  his  mind  to  endure  a  very  few  hours  of  it. 

Victor  Emanuel,  King  of  United  Italy,  and  welcomed  by  popular  acclama- 
tion in  Rome — his  second  son  almost  at  the  same  moment  proclaimed  King  of 
the  Spaniards — his  second  daughter  Queen  of  Portugal.  How  fortune  seems  to 
have  delighted  in  honoring  this  house  of  Savoy.  I  only  say  "  seems  to  have." 
1  do  not  venture  yet  to  regard  the  accession  of  King  Amadeus  to  the  crown  of 
Spain  as  necessarily  an  honorable  or  a  fortunate  thing.  Every  one  must  wish 
tiie  poor  young  prince  well  in  such  a  situation  ;  perhaps  we  should  rather  wish 
him  well  out  of  it.  Never  king  assumed  a  crown  with  such  ghastly  omens  to 
welcome  him.  Here  is  the  King  putting  on  his  diadem  ;  and  yonder,  lying  dead 
by  the  hand  of  an  assassin,  is  the  man  who  gave  him  the  diadem  and  made  him 
King  !  But  for  Juan  Prim  there  would  be  no  Amadeus,  King  of  the  Spaniards  ; 
and  for  that  reason  Juan  Prim  lies  dead.  The  young  King  must  have  needed  all 
his  hereditary  courage  to  enable  him  to  face  calmly  and  bravely,  as  he  seems  to 
have  done,  so  terrible  a  situation.  Macaulay  justly  says  that  no  danger  is  so 
trying  to  the  nerves  of  a  brave  man  as  the  danger  of  assassination.  Men  utterly 
reckless  in  battle — like  "  bonny  Dundee  "  for  example — have  owned  that  the 
knowledge  of  the  assassin's  purpose  and  haunting  presence  was  more  than  they 
could  endure.  The  young  Italian  prince  seems  to  have  shown  no  sign  of  flinch- 
ing. So  far  as  anything  indeed  is  known  of  him,  he  is  favorably  known  to 
the  world.  He  bore  himself  like  a  brave  soldier  at  Custozza,  and  obtained  the 
special  commendation  of  the  Austrian  victor,  the  gallant  old  Archduke  Albrecht. 
He  married  for  love  a  lady  of  station  decidedly  inferior  to  that  of  aroyai  prince  ; 
the  lady  had  the  honor  of  being  sneered  at  even  in  her  honeymoon  for  the 
modest,  inexpensive  simplicity  of  her  toilet,  as  she  appeared  with  her  young 
husband  at  one  of  the  watering-places  ;  he  had  not  made  himself  before  mar- 
riage the  subject  of  as  much  scandal  as  used  to  follow  and  float  around  the 
bachelor  reputation  of  his  elder  brother  Humbert.  He  is  believed  to  be  honestly 
and  manfully  liberal  in  his  views.  He  ought  to  make  a  good  King  as  kings  go — 
it"  the  murderers  of  General  Prim  only  give  him  the  chance. 

As  I  have  mentioned  the  name  of  the  man  whose  varied,  brilliant,  daring,  and 
turbulent  career  has  been  so  suddenly  cut  short,  I  may  perhaps  be  excused  for 
wandering  a  little  out  of  the  path  of  my  subject  to  say  that  I  think  many  of  the 
A  nerican  newspapers  have  hardly  done  justice  to  Prim.  Some  of  them  have 
written  of  him,  even  in  announcing  his  death,  as  if  it  were  not  possible  for  a 
man  to  be  honest  and  yet  not  to  be  a  republican.  In  more  than  one  instance 
the  murder  of  Prim  was  treated  as  a  sort  of  thing  which,  however  painful  to 
read  of,  was  yet  quite  natural  and  even  excusable  in  the  case  of  a  man  who  en- 
deavored to  give  his  country  a  King.  There  was  a  good  deal  too  much  of  the 
"  Sic  semper  tyrannis  "  tone  and  temper  about  some  of  the  journals.  Now,  I 
do  not  believe  that  Prim  was  a  patriot  of  that  unselfish  and  lofty  group  to  which 
William  the  Silent,  and  George  Washington,  and  Daniel  Manin  belong.  His 
xas  a  very  mixed  character,  and  ambition  had  a.  large  pUce  in  it.  But  I  be- 


64  VICTOR  EMANUEL,  KING  OF  ITALY. 

lieve  that  he  sincerely  loved  and  tried  to  serve  Spain  ;  and  I  believe  that  in  giv- 
ing her  a  King  he  honestly  thought  he  was  doing  for  her  the  thing  most  suited 
to  her  tendencies  and  her  interests.  If  Prim  could  have  made  Spain  a  republic, 
he  could  have  made  himself  her  President,  even  perhaps  for  life  ;  while  he  could 
not  venture,  she  being  a  kingdom,  to  constitute  himself  her  King.  Many  times 
did  Prim  himself  say  to  me,  before  the  outbreak  of  his  successful  revolt,  that 
he  believed  the  republican  to  be  the  ultimate  form  of  government  everywhere, 
and  that  he  would  gladly  see  it  in  Spain  ;  but  that  he  did  not  believe  Spain  was 
yet  suited  for  it,  or  numbered  republicans  enough.  "To  have  a  republic  you 
must  first  have  republicans,"  was  a  common  saying  of  his.  New  England  is  a 
very  different  sort  of  place  from  Old  Castrle.  At  all  events,  Prim  is  not  to 
be  condemned  as  a  traitor  to  his  country  and  to  liberty,  even  if  it  were  true  that 
he  could  have  created  a  Spanish  republic.  We  have  to  show  first  that  he  knew 
the  thing  was  possible  and  refused  to  do  it,  for  selfish  or  ignoble  motives.  This 
I  am  satisfied  is  not  true.  I  think  Prim  believed  a  republic  impossible  in  the 
Spain  of  to-day,  and  simply  acted  in  accordance  with  his  convictions.  He  came 
very  near  to  being  a  great  man  ;  he  wanted  not  much  of  being  a  great  patriot. 
He  was,  I  think,  better  than  his  fame.  As  Spain  has  decreed,  he  "deserved 
well  of  his  country.''  It  seems  hardly  reasonable  or  just  to  decry  him  or  con- 
demn him  because  he  did  not  deserve  better.  Such  as  he  was,  he  proved  him- 
self original.  "  He  walked,"  as  Carlyle  says,  "his  own  wild  road,  whither  that 
led  him."  In  an  age  very  prolific  of  great  political  men,  he  made  a  distinct 
name  and  place  for  himself.  "Name  thou  the  best  of  German  singers,"  ex- 
claims Heine  with  pardonable  pride,  "and  my  name  must  be  spoken  among 
them."  Name  the  half-dozen  really  great,  originating  characters  in  European 
politics  during  our  time,  and  the  name  of  Prim  must  come  in  among  them. 

But  I  was  speaking  of  Victor  Emanuel  and  his  children.  All  I  have  heard 
then  of  the  Duke  of  Aosta  leads  me  to  believe  that  he  is  qualified  to  make  a  re- 
spectable and  loyal  constitutional  sovereign.  High  intellectual  capacity  no  one 
expects  from  the  house  of  Savoy,  but  there  will  probably  be  good  sense,  manly 
feeling,  and  no  small  share  of  political  discretion.  In  the  Duke  of  Aosta,  too, 
Spain  will  have  a  King  who  can  have  no  possible  sympathy  with  slave  systems 
and  their  products  of  whatever  kind,  and  who  can  hardly  have  much  inclination 
for  the  coercing  and  dragooning  of  reluctant  populations.  If  Spain  in  his  day 
and  through  his  influence  can  get  decently  and  honorably  rid  of  Cuba,  she  will 
have  entered  upon  a  new  chapter  of  her  national  existence,  as  important  for  her 
as  that  grand  new  volume  which  opens  upon  France  when  defeat  has  purged  her 
of  her  thrice-accursed  "  militaryism."  The  dependencies  have  been  a  miserable 
misfortune  to  Spain.  They  have  entangled  her  in  all  manner  of  complications  ; 
they  have  filled  her  with  false  principles  ;  they  have  created  whole  corrupt 
classes  among  her  soldiers  and  politicians.  General  Prim  himself  once  assured 
me  that  the  real  revenues  of  Spain  were  in  no  wise  the  richer  for  her  colonial 
possessions.  Proconsuls  made  fortunes  and  spread  corruption  round  them,  and 
that  was  all.  If  her  new  King  could  only  contrive  to  relieve  Spain  of  this  source 
of  corruption  and  danger,  he  would  be  worth  all  the  cost  and  labor  of  the  revolu- 
tion which  gives  him  now  a  Spanish  throne. 

Why  did  fate  decree  that  the  very  best  of  all  the  children  of  Victor  Emanuel 
should  have  apparently  the  worst  fortune?  The  Princess  Clotilde  is  an  exile 
from  the  country  and  the  palace  of  her  husband  ;  and  if  the  sweetness  and  virtue 
of  one  woman  might  have  saved  a  court,  the  court  of  the  Tuileries  might  have 
been  saved  by  Victor  Emanuel's  eldest  daughter.  I  have  heard  the  Princess 


VICTOR  EMANUEL,  KING  OF  ITALY.  65 

Clotilde  talked  of  by  Ultramontanes,  Legitimists,  Orleanists,  Republicans,  Red 
Republicans  (by  some  among  the  latter  who  firmly  believed  that  the  poor  Em- 
press Euge'nie  was  wickeder  than  Messalina),  and  I  never  heard  a  word  spoken 
of  her  that  was  not  in  her  praise.  Every  one  admitted  that  she  was  a  pure  and 
noble  woman,  a  patient  wife,  a  devoted  mother  ;  full  of  that  unpretending  sim- 
plicity which,  let  us  own  it  frankly,  is  one  of  the  graces  which  very  high  birth 
and  old  blood  do  sometimes  bring.  The  Princess  must  in  her  secret  soul  have 
looked  down  on  some  of  the  odd  coteries  who  were  brought  around  her  at  the 
court  of  the  Tuileries.  She  comes  of  a  house  in  whose  genealogy,  to  quote  Dis- 
raeli's humorous  words,  "  Chaos  was  a  novel,"  and  she  found  herself  forced  into 
companionship  with  ladies  and  gentlemen  whose  fathers  and  mothers,  good  lack  ! 
sometimes  seemed  to  have  omitted  any  baptismal  registration  whatever.  I 
presume  she  was  not  ignorant  of  the  parentage  of  De  Morny,  or  Walewski,  or 
Walewski's  son,  or  the  Jerome  David  class  of  people.  I  presume  she  heard 
what  every  one  said  of  the  Countess  this  and  the  Marchioness  that,  and  so  on. 
Of  course  the  Princess  Clotilde  did  not  like  these  people — how  could  any  decent 
woman  like  them  ? — but  she  accepted  the  necessities  of  her  position  with  a  self- 
possession  and  dignity  which,  offending  no  one,  marked  the  line  distinctly  and 
honorably  between  her  and  them.  Her  joy  was  in  her  children.  She  loved  to 
show  them  to  friends,  and  to  visitors  even  whom  she  felt  that  she  could  treat  as 
friends.  Perhaps  she  is  not  less  happy  now  that  the  ill-omened,  fateful  splen- 
dors of  the  Palais  Royal  no  longer  help  to  make  a  gilded  cage  for  the  darlings 
of  her  nursery.  Of  the  whole  family,  hers  may  be  called  the  only  career  which 
has  been  doomed  to  what  the  world  describes  and  pities  as  failure.  It  may  well 
be  that  she  is  now  happiest  of  all  the  children  of  the  house  of  Savoy. 

Meanwhile,  Victor  Emanuel  has  been  welcomed  at  the  Quirinal,  and  is  in- 
deed, at  last,  King  of  Italy.  We  may  well  say  to  him,  as  Banquo  says  of  Mac- 
oeth,  "Thou  Wxst  it  all!"  Lombardy,  Tuscany,  Parma,  Modena,  the  Two 
Sicilies,  Venetia,  and  Rome — what  gathering  within  less  than  a  fifth  of  an 
ordinary  lifetime  !  And  on  the  Quirinal  Victor  Emanuel  may  be  said  to  have 
stood  alone.  Of  all  the  men  who  mainly  wrought  to  bring  about  that  grand 
consummation,  not  one  stood  by  his  side.  Daniel  Manin,  the  pure,  patient,  fear- 
less, patriot  hero  ;  Cavour,  the  consummate  statesman  ;  Massimo  d'Azeglio,  the 
Bayard  or  Lafayette  of  Italy's  later  days,  the  soldier,  scholar,  and  lover  of  his 
country — these  are  dead,  and  rest  with  Dante.  Mazzini  is  still  a  sort  of  exile — 
homeless,  unshaken,  seeing  his  prophecies  fulfil  themselves  and  his  ideas  come 
to  light,  while  he  abides  in  the  gloom  and  shadow,  and  the  world  calls  him  a 
dreamer.  Garibaldi  is  lending  the  aid  of  his  restless  sword  to  a  cause  which  he 
cannot  serve,  and  a  people  who  never  understood  him  ;  and  he  is  getting  sadly 
mixed  up  somehow  in  ordinary  minds  with  General  Cluseret  and  George  Francis 
Train.  Louis  Napoleon,  who,  whatever  his  crimes,  did  something  for  the  unity 
of  Italy,  is  a  broken  man  in  captivity.  Only  Victor  Emanuel,  least  gifted  of  all, 
utterly  unworthy  almost  to  be  named  in  the  same  breath  with  any  of  them 
(save  Louis  Napoleon  alone) — only  he  comes  forward  to  receive  the  glories  and 
stand  up  as  the  representative  of  one  Italy  !  Let  us  do  him  the  justice  to  ac- 
knowledge that  he  never  sought  the  position  or  the  glory.  He  accepted  both  as 
a  necessity  of  his  birth  and  his  place,  a  formal  duty  and  a  bore.  His  was  not 
the  character  which  goes  in  quest  of  greatness.  As  Falstaff  says  of  rebellion 
and  the  revolted  English  lord,  greatness  "lay  in  his  way,  and  he  found  it," 


LOUIS  ADOLPHE  THIERS. 


GUIZO  f  quietly  at  work  in  the  preparation  of  a  history  of  France  for  the 
T  instruction  of  children — Thiers  taking  his  place  in  a  balloon  to  fly  from 
one  seat  of  government  in  France  to  another !  Such  were  the  occupations,  at  a 
given  time  in  last  Novembei,  of  the  two  distinguished  men  whose  rivalries  and 
contentions  disturbed  the  politics  of  France  for  so  many  years. 

An  ill-natured  person  might  feel  inclined  to  say  that  the  adventures  in  the  bal- 
loon were  a  proper  crowning  of  the  edifice  of  M.  Thiers's  fitful  career.  Was 
not  his  whole  political  life  (non  meus  hie  sermo,  please  to  understand — it  is  the 
ill-natured  person  who  says  this)  an  enterprise  in  a  balloon,  high  out  of  all  the 
regions  where  common  sense,  consistency,  and  statesmanship  are  ruling  elements  ? 
Did  he  not  overleap  with  aeronautic  flight  when  it  so  suited  him,  from  liberalism 
to  conservatism,  from  advocating  freedom  of  thought  to  enforcing  the  harshest 
repression  ?  Was  not  his  literary  reputation  floated  into  high  air  by  that  most 
inflated  and  gaseous  of  all  balloons,  the  "  History  of  the  Consulate  and  the  Em- 
pire "  ?  Thiers  in  a  balloon  is  just  where  he  ought  to  be,  and  where  he  ever  has 
been.  Condense  into  one  meagre  little  person  all  the  egotism,  all  the  self-con- 
ceit, all  the  vainglory,  all  the  incapacity  for  looking  at  anything  whatever  from 
the  right  point  of  view,  which  belong  to  the  typical  Frenchman  of  fiction  and 
satire,  and  you  have  a  pretty  portrait  of  M.  Thiers. 

Doubtless,  the  ill-natured  person  who  should  say  all  this  would  be  able  to 
urge  a  good  many  plausible  reasons  in  justification  of  his  assertions.  Still,  one 
may  be  allowed  to  admire — one  cannot  help  admiring — the  astonishing  energy 
and  buoyancy  which  made  M.  Thiers,  despite  his  seventy-three  years,  the  most 
active  emissary  of  the  French  Republic  during  the  past  autumn,  the  aeronautic 
rival  of  the  vigorous  young  Corsican  Gambetta,  who  was  probably  hardly  grown 
enough  for  a  merry-go-round  in  the  Champs  Elyse'es  when  Thiers  was  begin- 
ning to  be  regarded  as  an  old  fogy  by  the  ardent  revolutionists  of  1848. 
About  the  middle  of  last  September,  a  few  days  after  the  sudden  creation  of  the 
French  Republic,  M.  Thiers  precipitated  himself  on  London.  An  account  in 
the  newspapers  described  him  as  "accompanied  by  five  ladies."  Thus  grace- 
fully escorted,  he  marched  on  the  English  capital.  He  had  interviews  with  Mr. 
Gladstone,  Lord  Granville,  the  French  Ambassador,  and  divers  other  great  per- 
sonages. He  was  always  rushing  from  diplomatic  ofHce  to  office.  He  "  inter- 
viewed "  everybody  in  London  who  could  by  any  possibility  be  supposed  capa- 
ble of  influencing  in  the  slightest  degree  the  fortunes  of  France.  He  never  for 
a  moment  stopped  talking.  Great  men  excel  each  other  in  various  qualities  ; 
but  there  never  was  a  great  man  who  could  talk  against  M.  Thiers.  He  could 
have  shut  up  the  late  Lord  Macaulay  in  no  time ;  and  I  doubt  whether  Mr. 
Seward  could  have  contrived  to  edge  in  a  word  while  Thiers  was  in  the  same 
room.  M.  Thiers  stayed  in  London  little  more  than  two  days.  He  arrived,  I 
think,  on  a  Wednesday  night,  and  left  on  the  following  Saturday.  During  that 
time  he  managed  to  do  all  the  interviewing,  and  was  likewise  able  to  take  his 
family  to  see  the  paintings  in  the  National  Gallery,  where  he  was  to  be  observed 
keenly  eyeing  the  pictures,  and  eloquently  laying  down  critical  law  and  gospel 
on  their  merits,  as  if  he  had  come  over  on  a  little  autumnal  holiday  from  a  set- 
tled and  peaceful  country,  which  no  longer  needed  looking  after.  Then  he 
started  from  London  in  a  steam-yacht,  cruised  about  the  North  Sea  and  the 


LOUIS  ADOLPHE  TRIERS.  67 

Baltic,  dropped  in  apon  the  King  of  Denmark,  sounded  the  views  of  Sweden, 
collected  the  general  opinion  of  Finland,  visited  the  Emperor  of  Russia  and 
talked  him  into  semi-bewilderment,  and  then  travelled  down  by  land  to  Vienna, 
where  he  used  all  his  powers  of  persuasion  on  the  Emperor  Francis  Joseph,  and 
to  Florence,  where  by  the  sheer  force  of  argument  and  fluency  he  drove  Victor 
Emanuel  nearly  out  of  his  senses.  Since  that  time,  he  all  but  concluded  an 
armistice  with  Bismarck,  and  when  last  I  heard  of  him  (previous  to  this  writing) 
he  was,  as  I  have  said,  going  on  a  mission  somewhere  in  a  balloon. 

During  his  recent  diplomatic  flights,  M.  Thiers  constantly  offered  to  en- 
counter much  greater  fatigues  and  responsibilities  if  needful.  He  was  ready  to 
go  anywhere  and  talk  to  anybody.  He  would  have  hunted  up  the  Emperor  of 
China  or  the  Mikado  of  Japan,  if  either  sovereign  seemed  in  the  remotest  degree 
likely  to  intervene  on  the  side  of  France.  I  believe  I  can  say  with  confidence, 
that  at  the  outset  of  his  expedition  he  had  no  official  authority  or  mission  what- 
ever from  the  Provisional  Government.  He  told  Jules  Favre  and  the  rest  that 
he  was  about  to  start  on  a  tour  of  inspection  round  the  European  cabinets,  and 
that  they  had  better  let  him  try  what  he  could  do ;  and  they  did  not  refuse  to 
let  him  try,  and  it  would  not  have  mattered  in  the  least  whether  they  refused  or 
not.  He  came,  in  the  first  instance,  altogether  "  on  his  own  hook."  Perhaps, 
at  first,  the  Republican  Government  was  not  very  anxious  to  accept  the  services 
of  M.  Thiers  as  a  messenger  of  peace.  No  living  Frenchman  had  done  half  so 
much  to  bring  about  the  state  of  national  feeling  which  enabled  Louis  Napoleon 
to  precipitate  the  nation  into  a  war  against  Prussia.  Perhaps  they  thought  the 
man  whose  bitterest  complaint  against  the  Emperor  was  that  he  failed  to  take 
advantage  of  the  chance  of  crushing  Prussia  in  1866,  was  not  the  most  likely 
emissary  to  conciliate  victorious  Prussia  in  1870.  But  Thiers  was  determined 
to  make  himself  useful,  and  the  Republican  Government  had  to  give  in  at  last, 
and  concede  some  sort  of  official  authority  to  him.  Like  the  young  lady  who 
said  she  married  the  importunate  suitor  to  get  rid  of  him,  Jules  Favre  and  his 
colleagues  probably  accepted  M.  Thiers  for  their  spokesman  as  the  only  way  of 
escaping  from  his  eloquence.  His  mission  was  heroic  and  patriotic,  or  egotistical 
and  fussy,  just  as  you  are  pleased  to  regard  it.  In  certain  lights  Cardinal  Richelieu 
.ooks  wonderfully  like  Bottom  the  weaver.  But  it  is  impossible  not  to  admire 
the  energy  and  courage  of  the  irrepressible,  inexhaustible,  fragile-looking,  shabby 
old  Orleanist.  Thiers  does  not  seem  a  personage  capable  of  enduring  fatigue. 
He  appears  a  sapless,  withered,  wasted  old  creature.  But  the  restless,  fiery, 
exuberant,  egotistical  energy  which  carried  him  along  so  far  and  so  fast  in  life, 
has  apparently  gained  rather  than  lost  in  strength  and  resource  during  the  forty 
years  which  have  elapsed  since  the  subject  of  this  sketch,  then  editor  of  the 
•'  National,"  drew  up  in  Paris  the  famous  protest  against  the  five  infamous 
ordonnances  of  Charles  the  Tenth,  and  thus  sounded  the  prelude  to  the  Revolu- 
tion of  July. 

It  must  have  been  no  common  stock  of  self-possession  and  self-complacency 
which  enabled  M.  Thiers  to  present  himself  before  the  great  Prussian  Chancellor 
as  a  messenger  of  peace.  Bismarck,  who  has  a  happy  knack  of  apt  Shakespearian 
quotation,  might  have  accosted  him  in  the  words  of  Beatrice  and  said,  "  This  is  a 
man's  office,  but  not  yours."  For  M  Thiers,  throughout  his  whole  career,  de- 
voted his  brilliant  gifts  to  the  promotion  of  that  spirit  of  narrow  national  vainglory 
which  of  late  years  has  made  France  dreaded  and  detested  in  Germany.  M. 
Thiers  is  like  ^sop's  trumpeter — guilty  not  of  making  war  himself,  but  of  blow- 
ing the  blasts  which  set  other  men  fighting.  The  very  speech  in  which  he  pro- 


68  LOUIS  ADOLPHE  THIERS. 

tested  last  summer  against  the  war  initiated  by  the  Imperial  Government,  was 
inspired  by  a  principle  more  immoral,  and  more  calculated  to  inflame  Germany 
with  resentment,  than  the  very  declaration  of  war  itself.  For  Thiers  only  con- 
demned the  war  on  the  ground  that  France  was  not  properly  prepared  to  crush 
Germany;  that  she  had  lost  her  opportunity  by  not  falling  on  Prussia  while  the 
latter  was  in  the  death-grapple  with  Austria  in  1866;  and  that  as  France  had 
not  done  the  thing  at  the  right  time,  she  had  better  not  run  the  risk  of  doing  it 
incompletely,  by  making  the  effort  at  an  inopportune  moment. 

These  considerations,  however,  did  not  trouble  M.  Thiers.  He  advanced  to 
meet  Count  von  Bismarck  with  the  easy  confidence  of  one  who  feels  that  he  has 
a  right  to  be  treated  as  the  best  of  friends  and  most  appropriate  of  envoys.  If, 
immediately  after  the  conclusion  of  the  American  war,  John  Bright  had  been 
sent  to  Washington  by  England  to  endeavor  to  settle  the  Alabama  dispute,  he 
probably  would  not  have  approached  the  President  with  anything  like  the  confi- 
dent assurance  of  a  genial  welcome  which  inspired  M.  Thiers  when  he  offered 
himself  as  a  messenger  to  the  Prussian  statesman.  This  very  sublimity  of 
egotism  is,  and  always  was,  one  of  the  sources  of  the  success  of  M.  Thiers. 
No  man  could  with  more  perfect  composure  and  self-satisfaction  dare  to  be  in- 
consistent. His  was  the.  very  audacity  and  Quixotism  of  inconsistency.  In 
office  to-day,  he  could  advocate  and  enforce  the  very  measures  of  repression 
which  yesterday,  out  of  office,  he  was  the  foremost  to  denounce — nay,  which  he 
obtained  office  by  opposing  and  denouncing.  He  whose  energetic  action  in  pro- 
testing against  the  celebrated  five  ordonnances  of  Charles  the  Tenth  did  so 
much  to  bring  about  the  Revolution  of  July,  was  himself  the  chief  official  autho' 
of  the  equally  celebrated  "laws  of  September,"  introduced  in  Louis  Philippe's 
reign,  which  might  have  suited  the  administration  ot  a  Peter  the  Great,  or  any 
other  uncompromising  despot.  In  practical  politics,  of  course,  almost  every 
minister  is  occasionally  compelled  by  the  force  of  circumstances  to  do  things 
which  bear  a  considerable  resemblance  to  acts  warmly  condemned  by  him  while 
he  sat  in  opposition.  But  M.  Thiers  invariably,  when  in  power,  exhibited  him- 
self as  the  author  and  champion  of  principles  and  policy  which  he  had  de- 
nounced with  all  the  force  of  his  eloquent  tongue  when  he  was  the  opponent  of 
the  Government.  He  seemed  in  fact  to  be  two  men  rather  than  one,  so  entirely 
did  Thiers  in  office  contrast  with  Thiers  in  opposition.  But  Thiers  himself 
never  appeared  conscious  of  inconsistency.  Indeed,  he  was  always  consistent 
with  his  one  grand  essential  principle  and  creed — faith  in  the  inspiration  and  the 
destiny  of  M.  Thiers. 

To  one  other  principle  too  let  it  be  said  in  justice  that  this  brilliant  politi- 
cian has  always  been  faithful — the  principle  which  maintains  the  right  of  France 
to  throw  her  sword  into  the  scale  where  every  or  any  foreign  question  is  to  be 
weighed.  When,  after  a  long  absence  from  the  parliamentary  arena,  he  entered 
the  Imperial  Corps  L6gislatif  as  one  of  the  deputies  for  Paris,  he  soon  proved 
himself  to  be  "old  Cassius  still."  Age,  study,  experience,  retirement,  reflection, 
had  in  no  wise  dimmed  the  fire  of  his  ardent  nationalism.  Eagerly  as  ever  he 
contended  for  the  sacred  right  of  France  to  dragoon  all  Europe  into  obedience, 
to  chop  up  the  Continent  into  such  symmetrical  sections  as  might  seem  suitable 
to  the  taste  and  the  convenience  of  French  statesmen.  Undoubtedly  he  was  a 
sharp,  tormenting  thorn  in  the  side  of  the  Imperial  Government  when  he  re- 
turned to  active  political  life.  Louis  Napoleon  had  no  minister  who  could  pre- 
tend to  compare  with  Thiers  in  debate.  He  was  an  aggravating  and  exasperat- 
,ng  enemy,  against  whom  fluent  and  shallow  men  like  Billault  and  Baroche.  or 


LOUIS  ADOLPHE  TRIERS.  69 

even  speakers  of  heavier  calibre  like  Rouher,  had  no  chance  whatever.  But 
there  \rere  times  when  to  any  impartial  mind  the  invectives  of  Thiers  made  the 
Imperial  policy  look  noble  and  enlightened  in  comparison  with  the  canons  of 
detestable  egotism  which  he  propounded  as  the  true  principles  of  government. 
I  remember  thinking  more  than  once  that  if  Louis  Napoleon's  Ministers  could 
only  have  risen  to  the  real  height  of  the  situation  and  appealed  to  whatever  there 
was  of  lofty  unselfish  feeling  in  France,  they  might  have  overwhelmed  their  re- 
morseless and  envenomed  critic.  In  1866  and  1867,  for  example,  Thiers  made  it 
a  cardinal  point  of  complaint  and  invective  against  the  French  Government  that 
it  had  not  prevented  by  force  of  arms  the  progress  of  Germany's  unity.  Noth- 
ing could  be  more  pungent,  brilliant,  bitter,  than  the  eloquence  with  which  he 
proclaimed  and  advocated  his  doctrines  of  ignoble  and  unscrupulous  selfishness. 
Why  did  not  the  Imperial  spokesmen  assume  a  virtue  if  they  had  it  not,  and 
boldly  declare  that  the  Government  of  France  scorned  the  shallow  and  envious 
policy  which  sees  calamity  and  danger  in  the  union  and  growing  strength  of  a 
neighboring  people  ?  Such  a  chord  bravely  struck  would  have  awakened  an 
echo  in  every  true  and  generous  heart.  But  the  Imperial  Ministers  feebly  tried 
to  fight  M.  Thiers  upon  his  own  ground,  to  accept  his  principles  as  the  condi- 
tions of  contest.  They  endeavored  in  a  paltering  and  limping  way  to  show  that 
the  French  Government  had  been  selfish  and  only  selfish,  and  had  taken  every 
care  to  keep  Germany  properly  weak  and  divided.  It  was  during  one  of  these 
debates,  thus  provoked  by  M.  Thiers,  that  occasion  was  given  to  Count  von  Bis- 
marck for  one  of  his  most  striking  coups  de  theatre.  The  French  Minister  (if  I 
remember  rightly,  it  was  M.  Rouher),  tortured  and  baited  by  M.  Thiers,  stood  at 
bay  at  last,  and  boldly  declared  that  the  Government  of  France  had  taken  meas- 
ures to  render  impossible  any  political  cohesion  of  North  and  South  Germany. 
A  day  or  two  after,  Count  von  Bismarck  effectively  and  contemptuously  replied 
to  this  declaration  by  unfolding  in  the  Prussian  Chamber  the  treaties  of  alliance 
already  concluded  between  his  Government  and  the  South  German  States. 

It  has  always  been  a  matter  of  surprise  to  me  that  Thiers  did  not  prove  a 
success  at  the  bar,  to  which  at  first  he  applied  his  abilities.  He  seems  to  have 
the  very  gifts  which  would  naturally  have  made  a  great  pleader.  All  through  his 
political  career  he  displayed  a  wonderful  capacity  for  making  the  worse  appear 
the  better  cause.  The  adroitness  which  contends  skilfully  that  black  is  white 
to-day,  having  argued  with  equal  force  and  fluency  that  white  was  green  yester- 
day, would  have  been  highly  appropriate  and  respectable  in  a  legal  advocate. 
But  M.  Thiers  did  not  somehow  get  on  at  the  bar,  and  having  no  influential 
friends  (he  was,  I  think,  the  son  of  a  locksmith),  but  plenty  of  ambition,  courage, 
and  confidence,  he  strove  to  enter  political  life  by  the  avenue  of  journalism. 
Much  of  Thiers's  subsequent  success  as  a  debater  was  probably  due  to  that  skill 
which  a  practised  journalist  naturally  acquires — the  dexterity  of  arraying  facts 
and  arguments  so  as  not  to  bear  too  long  on  any  one  part  of  the  subject,  and  not 
to  offer  to  the  mind  of  the  reader  more  than  his  patience  and  interest  are  willing 
to  accept.  Most  of  the  events  of  his  political  career,  up  to  his  reappearance  in 
public  life  in  1863,  belong  wholly  to  history  and  the  past.  His  long  rivalry  with 
Guizot,  his  intrigues  out  of  office,  and  his  conduct  as  a  Minister  of  Louis 
Philippe,  have  hardly  a  more  direct  and  vital  connection  with  the  affairs  of  to- 
day than  the  statecraft  of  Mazarin  or  the  political  vicissitudes  of  Bolingbroke. 
One  indeed  of  the  projects  of  M.  Thiers  has  now  come  rather  unexpectedly  into 
active  operation.  The  fortifications  of  Paris  were  the  offspring  of  the  apprehen- 
sion M.  Thiers  entertained,  thirty  years  ago,  that  the  Eastern  question  of  that 


70  LOUIS  ADOLPHE  THIERS. 

day  might  provoke  another  great  European  war.  Since  that  time  many  critics 
sneered  and  laughed  a  good  deal  at  M.  Thiers's  system  of  fortifications  ;  but  the 
whirligig  of  time  has  brought  the  statesman  his  revenge.  No  one  could  mis- 
take the  meaning  of  the  smile  of  self-satisfaction  which  used  last  autumn  to  light 
up  the  unattractive  features  of  the  veteran  Orleanist,  as  he  made  tour  after  tour 
of  inspection  around  the  defences  of  Paris.  This  chain  of  fortifications  alone,  one 
might  almost  say,  connects  the  Thiers  of  the  present  generation  with  the  Thiers 
of  the  past.  There  were  malignant  persons  who  did  not  scruple  to  say  that  the 
author  of  the  scheme  of  defences  was  not  altogether  sorry  for  the  national  ca- 
lamity which  had  brought  them  into  use,  and  apparently  justified  their  construc- 
tion. It  is  very  hard  to  be  altogether  sorry  for  even  a  domestic  misfortune 
which  gives  one  who  is  especially  proud  of  his  foresight  and  sagacity  an  oppor- 
tunity of  pointing  out  that  the  precautions  which  he  recommended,  and  other 
members  of  the  family  scorned,  are  now  eagerly  adopted  by  unanimous  concur- 
rence. There  certainly  was  something  of  the  pardonable  pride  of  the  author  of 
a  long  misprized  invention  visible  in  the  face  of  M.  Thiers  as  he  used  to  gaze 
upon  his  beloved  system  of  fortifications  any  time  in  last  September.  Little  did 
even  he  himself  think  when,  after  Sadowa,  he  accused  the  Emperor's  Government 
of  having  left  itself  no  blunder  more  to  commit,  that  it  had  yet  to  perpetrate  one 
crowning  and  gigantic  mistake,  and  that  one  effect  at  least  of  this  stupendous 
error  would  be  to  compel  Paris  to  treat  au  sMeux,  and  as  a  supreme  necessity, 
that  system  of  defences  so  long  regarded  as  good  for  little  else  than  to  remind  the 
present  generation  that  Louis  Adolphe  Thiers  was  once  Prime  Minister  of  France. 
Thiers  was  not  far  short  of  seventy  years  old  when,  in  1863,  he  entered  upon 
a  new  chapter  of  his  public  life  as  one  of  the  deputies  for  Paris  in  the  Imperial 
Corps  Ldgislatif.  A  new  generation  had  meantime  arisen.  Men  were  growing 
into  fame  as  orators  and  politicians  who  were  boys  when  Thiers  was  last  heard 
as  a  parliamentary  debater.  He  returned  to  political  life  at  an  eventful  time  and 
accompanied  by  some  notable  compeers.  The  elections  which  sent  Thiers  to 
represent  the  department  of  the  Seine  made  the  venerable  and  illustrious  Berry e.r 
one  of  the  delegates  from  Marseilles.  I  doubt  whether  the  political  life  of  any 
country  has  ever  produced  a  purer,  grander  figure  than  that  of  Berryer ;  I  am 
sure  that  an  obsolete  and  hopeless  cause  never  had  a  nobler  advocate.  The  ge- 
nius and  the  virtues  of  Berryer  are  indeed  the  loftiest  claims  modern  French 
legitimacy  can  offer  to  the  respect  of  posterity.  I  look  back  with  a  feeling  of 
something  like  veneration  to  that  grand  and  kingly  form,  to  the  sweet,  serene, 
unaffected  dignity  of  that  august  nature.  Berryer  belonged  to  a  totally  different 
political  order  from  that  of  Thiers.  As  John  Bright  is  to  Disraeli,  as  John 
Henry  Newman  is  to  Monsignore  Capel,  as  Montalembert  was  to  Louis  Veuil- 
lot,  as  Charles  Sumner  is  to  Seward,  so  was  Berryer  to  Thiers.  Of  the  oratori- 
cal merits  of  the  two  men  I  shall  speak  hereafter;  now  I  refer  to  the  relative 
value  of  their  political  characters.  With  Thiers  and  Berryer  there  came  back  to 
political  life  some  men  of  mark  and  worth.  Garnier-Pages  was  one,  the  impul- 
sive, true-hearted,  not  very  strong-headed  Republican  ;  a  man  who  might  be  a 
great  leader  if  fine  phrases  and  good  intentions  could  rule  the  world.  Carnot 
was  another,  not  much  perhaps  in  himself,  but  great  as  the  son  of  the  illustrious 
organizer  of  victory  (oh,  if  France  had  lately  had  one  hour  of  Carnot !),  and  per- 
sonally very  popular  just  then  because  of  his  scornful  rejection  of  Louis  Napo- 
leon's offer  to  bring  back  the  ashes  of  his  father  from  Magdeburg  in  Prussia  to 
France.  Eugene  Pelletan,  who  had  been  suffering  savage  persecution  because 
of  his  fierce  attack  on  the  Empire  in  his  book,  "The  New  Babylon  "  ;  Jules  Si- 
mon, a  superior  sort  of  French  Tom  Hughes — Tom  Hughes  with  icpublican 


LOUIS  ADOLPHE  THIERS.  71 

convictions  and  strong  backbone — and  several  other  men  of  name  and  fibre,  were 
now  companions  in  the  Corps  Le"gislatif.  All  these,  differing  widely  in  personal 
opinions,  and  indeed  representing  every  kind  of  political  view,  from  the  chival- 
rous and  romantic  legitimacy  of  Berryer  to  the  republican  religion  or  fetichism 
of  Gamier-Pages,  combined  to  make  up  an  opposition  to  the  Imperial  Govern- 
ment. Up  to  that  time  the  opposition  had  consisted  simply  of  five  men.  For 
years  those  five  had  fought  a  persevering  and  apparently  hopeless  fight  against 
the  strength  of  Imperial  arms,  Imperial  gold,  and  the  lungs  of  Imperial  hire- 
lings. Of  the  five  the  leader  was  Jules  Favre.  The  second  in  command  was 
Emile  Ollivier,  whose  treason  to  liberty,  truth,  and  peace  has  since  been  so  sternly 
avenged  by  destiny.  The  other  three  were  Picard,  a  member  of  the  Republican 
Government  of  September,  and  MM.  Darimon  and  Henon.  Numerically  the 
opposition,  now  strengthened  by  the  new  accessions,  became  quite  respectable  ; 
morally  and  politically  it  wholly  changed  the  situation.  It  was  no  longer  a  Le- 
onidas  or  Horatius  Codes  desperately  holding  a  pass  ;  it  was  an  army  encoun- 
tering an  army.  The  Imperialists  of  course  still  far  outnumbered  their  oppo- 
nents ;  but  there  were  no  men  among  the  devotees  of  Imperialism  who  could 
even  pretend  to  compare  as  orators  with  Berryer,  Thiers,  or  Favre.  Of  these 
three  men,  it  seems  to  me  that  Berryer  was  by  far  the  greatest  orator,  but  Thiers 
left  him  nowhere  as  a  partisan  leader.  Thiers  undoubtedly  pushed  Jules  Favre 
aside  and  made  him  quite  a  secondary  figure.  Thiers  delighted  in  worrying  a 
ministry.  He  never  needed,  as  Berryer  did,  the  impulse  of  a  great  principle  and 
a  great  purpose.  He  felt  all  the  joy  of  the  strife  which  distinguishes  the  born 
gladiator.  He  soon  proved  that  his  years  had  in  no  degree  impaired  his  orator- 
ical capacity.  It  became  one  of  the  grand  events  of  Paris  when  Thiers  was  to 
speak.  Owing  to  the  peculiar  regulations  of  the  French  Chamber,  which  re- 
quired that  those  who  meant  to  take  part  in  a  debate  should  inscribe  their 
names  beforehand  in  the  book,  and  speak  according  to  their  turn — an  odious 
usage,  fatal  to  all  genuine  debate — it  was  always  known  in  advance  through 
Paris  that  to-morrow  or  the  day  after  Thiers  was  to  speak.  Then  came  a  strug- 
gle for  places  in  what  an  Englishman  would  call  the  strangers'  gallery.  The 
Palais  Bourbon,  where  the  Corps  Le'g'islatif  held  its  sittings,  opposite  the  Place 
de  la  Concorde,  has  the  noble  distinction  of  providing  the  least  and  worst  accom- 
modation for  the  public  of  any  House  of  Assembly  in  the  civilized  world.  The 
English  House  of  Commons  is  miserably  defective  and  niggardly  in  this  respect, 
but  it  is  liberal  and  lavish  when  compared  with  the  French  Corps  Le'gislatif. 
Therefore,  when  M.  Thiers  was  about  to  speak,  there  was  as  much  intriguing, 
clamoring,  beseeching,  wrangling,  storming  for  seats  in  the  public  tribunes  as 
would  have  sufficed  to  carry  an  English  county  election.  The  trouble  had  its 
reward.  Nobody  could  be  disappointed  in  M.  Thiers  who  merely  desired  an  in- 
tellectual exercise  and  treat.  Thiers  never  was  heavy  or  dull.  He  is,  I  think, 
the  most  interesting  of  all  the  great  European  debaters.  I  do  not  know  whether 
I  convey  exactly  the  meaning  I  wish  to  express  when  I  used  the  word  "inter- 
esting." What  I  mean  is  that  there  is  in  M.  Thiers  an  inexhaustible  vivacity, 
freshness,  and  variety  which  never  allows  the  attention  to  wander  or  flag.  He 
never  dwells  too  long  on  any  one  part  of  bis  subject ;  or  if  he  has  to  dwell  long 
anywhere,  he  enlivens  the  theme  by  a  lavish  copiousness  of  novel  argument,  ap- 
plication, and  illustration,  which  is  irresistibly  piquant  and  fascinating.  Reenter- 
ing  public  life  in  his  old  age,  M.  Thiers  had  physically  something  like  the  advan- 
tage which  I  have  known  to  be  possessed  by  certain  mature  actresses,  who,  never 
having  had  any  claim  to  personal  beauty  in  their  youth,  were  visited  with  hardly 
any  penalty  of  time  when  they  began  to  descend  into  age.  Thiers  always  had 


72  LOUIS  ADOLPHE  TRIERS 

an  insignificant  presence,  a  dreadfully  bad  voice,  and  an  unpleasant  delivery. 
Time  added  nothing,  and  probably  could  add  nothing,  to  these  disadvantages. 
Already  John  Bright  has  lost,  already  Gladstone  is  losing,  those  magnificent 
qualities  of  voice  ana  intonation  which  till  lately  distinguished  both  from  all 
other  living  English  orators.  One  of  the  only  fine  passages  in  Disraeli's  "Life 
of  Lord  George  Bentinck  "  is  that  in  which  he  describes  the  melancholy  sensation 
created  in  the  House  of  Commons  when  Daniel  O'Connell,  feeble  and  broken 
down,  tried  vainly  to  raise  above  a  mumbling  murmur  those  accents  which  once 
could  thrill  and  vibrate  to  the  furthest  corner  of  the  most  capacious  hall.  But 
the  voice  and  delivery  of  Thiers  at  seventy  were  no  whit  worse  than  those  of 
Thiers  at  forty  ;  and  in  energy,  vivacity,  and  variety,  I  think  the  opposition 
leader  of  1866  had  rather  gained  upon  the  Minister  of  1836.  In  everything  that 
makes  a  great  orator  he  was  far  beneath  Berryer.  The  latter  had  as  command- 
ing a  presence  as  he  had  a  superb  voice,  and  a  manner  at  once  graceful  and  dig- 
nified. Berryer,  too,  had  the  sustaining  strength  of  a  profound  conviction,  pure 
and  lofty  as  a  faith.  If  Berryer  was  a  political  Don  Quixote,  Thiers  was  a  polit- 
ical Gil  Bias.  Thiers  was  all  sparkle,  antithesis,  audacity,  sophistry.  His  tours 
de  force  were  perfect  masterpieces  of  fearless  adroitness.  He  darted  from  point 
to  point,  from  paradox  to  paradox,  with  the  bewildering  agility  of  a  squirrel.  He 
flashed  through  the  heavy  atmosphere  of  a  dull  debate  with  the  scintillating  ra- 
diancy of  a  firefly.  He  propounded  sentiments  of  freedom  which  would  posi- 
tively have  captivated  you  if  you  had  not  known  a  little  of  the  antecedents  of  the 
orator.  He  threw  off  concise  and  luminous  maxims  of  government  which  would 
have  been  precious  guides  if  human  politics  could  only  be  ruled  by  epigram. 
His  long  experience  as  a  partisan  leader,  in  and  out  of  office,  had  made  him  mas- 
ter of  a  vast  array  of  facts  and  dates,  which  he  was  expert  to  marshal  in  such  a 
manner  as  often  to  bewilder  his  opponents.  His  knowledge  of  the  mechanism 
and  regulations  of  diplomatic  and  parliamentary  practice  was  consummate.  He 
was  singularly  clear  and  attractive  in  statement;  his  mode  of  putting  a  case  had 
something  in  it  that  was  positively  fascinating.  He  was  sharp  and  severe  in  re- 
tort, and  there  was  a  cold,  self-complacent  hauteur  in  his  way  of  putting  down 
an  adversary,  which  occasionally  reminded  one  of  a  peculiarity  of  Earl  Russell's 
style  when  the  latter  was  still  a  good  parliamentary  debater.  M.  Thiers  had  the 
great  merit  of  never  talking  over  the  heads,  above  the  understandings  of  his  au- 
dience. His  style  of  language  was  of  the  same  character  perhaps  as  that  of  Mr. 
Wendell  Phillips.  Of  course  no  two  men  could  possibly  be  more  unlike  in  the 
manner  of  speaking,  but  the  rhetorical  vernacular  of  both  has  a  considerable  re- 
semblance. The  diction  in  each  case  is  clear,  incisive,  penetrating — never,  or 
hardly  ever,  rising  to  anything  of  exalted  oratorical  grandeur,  never  involved  in 
mist  or  haze  of  any  kind,  and  with  the  same  habitual  acidity  and  sharpness  in 
it.  I  presume  M.  Thiers  wrote  the  greater  part  of  his  speeches  beforehand,  but 
he  evidently  had  the  happy  faculty,  rare  even  among  accomplished  orators, 
which  enables  a  speaker  to  blend  the  elaborately  prepared  portions  of  his  dis- 
course with  the  extemporaneous  passages  originated  by  the  impulses  and  the  in- 
cidents of  the  debate.  Some  of  the  cleverest  arguments,  and  especially  some  of 
the  cleverest  sarcastic  hits  in  M.  Thiers's  recent  speeches,  were  provoked  by 
questions  and  interruptions  which  must  have  been  quite  unexpected.  Eut  a 
strange  peculiarity  about  the  whole  body  of  the  speeches,  the  written  parts  as 
well  as  the  extemporaneous,  was  that  they  bore  no  resemblance  whatever  to  the 
glittering  and  gorgeous  style  which  is  so  common  and  so  objectionable  in  the 
pages  of  the  author's  history  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  of  the  Consul- 
ate and  the  Empire.  I  must  say  that  I  think  M.  Thiers's  historical  works 


LOUIS  ADOLPHE  TRIERS.  73 

are  decidedly  heavy  reading.  I  think  his  speeches  are  more  interesting  and  at- 
tractive to  read  than  those  of  any  political  speaker  of  our  day.  As  an  orator  I  set 
him  below  Berryer,  below  Gladstone  and  Bright,  below  Wendell  Phillips,  and  not 
above  Disraeli.  But  as  an  interesting  speaker — I  can  think  of  no  better  qualifica- 
tion for  him — I  place  M.  Thiers  above  any  of  those  masters  of  the  art  of  eloquence. 

I  have  not  compared  M.  Thiers  with  Jules  Favre.  Any  juxtaposition  of  the 
two  ought  rather  perhaps  to  be  in  the  way  of  contrast  than  of  comparison.  Jules 
Favre  is  probably  the  most  exquisite  and  perfect  rhetorician  practising  in  the 
public  debates  of  our  time.  No  one  else  can  lend  so  brilliant  an  effect,  so  de- 
lightful an  emphasis  to  words  and  phrases  by  the  mere  modulations  of  his  tone. 
I  once  heard  a  French  workingman  say  that  Jules  Favre  parlait  commc  un  ange. 
— talked  like  an  angel ;  and  there  was  a  simple  appropriateness  in  the  expression. 
An  angel,  if  he  had  to  address  so  unsympathetic  and  uncongenial  an  audience  as 
the  Imperial  Corps  Ldgislatif,  could  hardly  lend  more  musical  effect  to  the  mean- 
ing of  his  words  than  was  given  by  Jules  Favre's  consummate  rhetorical  skill. 
But  I  must  acknowledge  that  to  me  at  least  there  never  seemed  to  be  much  in 
what  Jules  Favre  said.  It  seemed  to  me  too  often  to  want  marrow  and  backbone. 
It  was  an  eloquence  of  fine  phrases  and  splendid  vague  generalities.  "  Flow  on, 
thou  shining  river,"  one  felt  sometimes  inclined  to  say  as  the  bright,  broad,  shal- 
low stream  glided  away.  If  Thiers  spoke  for  half  a  day,  and  the  discourse  cov- 
ered a  dozen  columns  of  the  closely-printed  "  Moniteur,"  yet  the  listener  or 
reader  came  away  with  the  impression  that  the  orator  had  crammed  quite  a  sur 
prising  quantity  of  matter  into  his  speech,  and  could  have  found  ever  so  much 
more  to  say  on  the  same  subject.  The  impression  produced  on  me  at  least  by 
the  speeches  of  Jules  Favre  was  always  of  the  very  opposite  character.  They 
seemed  to  be  all  rhetoric  and  modulation  ;  they  were  without  depth  and  with- 
out fibre.  The  essentially  declamatory  character  of  Jules  Favre's  eloquence 
received  its  most  complete  illustration  in  that  remarkable  document — so  painful 
and  pathetic  because  of  its  obvious  earnestness,  so  ludicrous  and  almost  con- 
temptible because  of  its  turgid  and  extravagant  outbursts — the  report  of  his 
recent  interviews  with  Count  von  Bismarck  at  the  Prussian  headquarters  near 
Versailles.  One  must  keep  constantly  in  mind  the  awful  seriousness  of  the  sit- 
uation, and  the  genuine  suffering  which  it  must  have  imposed  upon  Jules  Favre, 
not  to  laugh  outright  or  feel  disgusted  at  the  inflated,  hyperbolical,  and  melo- 
dramatic style  in  which  the  Republican  Minister  describes  his  interview  with  the 
Prussian  Chancellor.  Now,  whatever  faults  of  style  M.  Thiers  might  commit, 
he  never  could  thus  make  himself  ridiculous.  He  never  allows  himself  to  be 
out  of  tune  with  the  occasion  and  the  audience.  You  may  differ  utterly  from 
him,  you  may  distrust  and  dislike  him  ;  but  Thiers,  the  parliamentary  orator,  will 
not  permit  you  to  laugh  at  him. 

Thiers  was  always  very  happy  in  his  replies  and  retorts,  and  he  never  allowed 
if  he  could  an  interruption  to  one  of  his  speeches  in  the  Corps  Legislatif  to  pass 
without  seizing  its  meaning  and  at  once  dissecting  and  demolishing  it.  He 
rejoiced  in  the  light  sword-play  of  such  exercises.  He  would  never  have  been 
contented  with  the  superb  quietness  of  contempt  by  which  Berryer  in  one  of  his 
latest  speeches  crushed  Granier  de  Cassagnac,  the  abject  serf  and  hireling  of 
Imperialism.  While  Berryer  was  speaking,  Granier  de  Cassagnac  suddenly 
expressed  his  coarse  dissent  from  one  of  the  orator's  statements  by  crying  out, 
"  That  is  not  true."  Berryer  was  not  certain  as  to  the  source  of  this  insolent 
interruption.  He  gazed  all  round  the  assembly,  and  demanded  in  accents  of 
subdued  and  noble  indignation  who  had  dared  thus  to  challenge  the  truth  of  his 
statement.  There  was  a  dead  pause.  Even  enemies  looked  up  with  reverence 


74  LOUIS  ADOLPHE  THIERS. 

to  the  grand  old  orator,  and  were  ashamed  of  the  rude  insult  flung  at  him.  De 
Cassagnac  quailed,  but  every  eye  was  on  him,  and  he  was  compelled  to  declare 
himself.  "  It  was  I  who  spoke,"  said  the  Imperial  servant.  Berryer  looked  at  him 
for  a  moment,  and  then  said,  "Oh,  it  was  you/ — then  it  is  of  no  consequence," 
and  calmly  resumed  the  thread  of  his  discourse.  Nothing  could  have  been 
finer,  nothing  more  demolishing  than  the  cold,  grand  contempt  which  branded 
De  Cassagnac  as  a  creature  incapable  of  meriting,  even  by  insult,  the  notice  of  a 
man  of  honor.  But  Thiers  would  never  have  been  satisfied  with  such  a  mode 
of  crushing  an  adversary  ;  and  indeed  it  needed  all  the  majesty  of  Berryer's  pres- 
ence and  the  moral  grandeur  of  his  character  to  give  it  full  force  and  emphasis. 
Thiers  would  have  showered  upon  the  head  of  the  Imperial  lacquey  a  whole 
fiery  cornucopia  of  sarcasm  and  sharp  invective,  and  De  Cassagnac  would  have 
gone  home  rather  proud  of  having  drawn  down  upon  his  head  the  angry  elo- 
quence of  the  great  Orleanist  orator. 

Thiers  threw  his  whole  soul  into  his  speeches — not  merely  as  to  their  prepa- 
ration, but  as  to  their  revision  and  publication.  According  to  the  Imperial  sys- 
tem, no  independent  reports  of  speeches  in  the  Chambers  were  allowed  to  ap- 
pear in  print.  The  official  stenographers  noted  down  in  full  each  day's  debate, 
and  the  whole  was  published  next  day  in  the  "  Moniteur  Universel."  These  re- 
ports professed  to  give  every  word  and  syllable  of  the  speeches — every  whisper 
of  interruption.  Sometimes,  therefore,  the  "Moniteur"  came  out  with  twenty 
of  its  columns  filled  up  with  the  dull  maunderings  of  some  provincial  blockhead, 
for  whom  servility  and  money  had  secured  an  official  candidature.  Besides  these 
stupendous  reports,  the  Government  furnished  a  somewhat  condensed  version,  in 
which  the  twenty-column  speech  was  reduced  say  to  a  dozen  columns.  Either 
of  these  reports  the  public  journals  might  take,  but  none  other ;  and  no  journal 
must  alter  or  condense  by  the  omission  of  a  line  or  the  substitution  of  a  word 
the  text  thus  officially  furnished.  When  Thiers  had  spent  the  whole  day  in  de- 
livering a  speech,  he  was  accustomed  to  spend  the  whole  night  in  reading  over 
and  correcting  the  proof-sheets  of  the  official  report.  The  venerable  orator 
would  hurry  home  when  the  sitting  was  over,  change  his  clothes,  get  into  his 
arm-chair  before  his  desk,  and  set  to  work  at  the  proof-sheets  according  as  they 
came.  Over  these  he  would  toil  with  the  minute  and  patient  inspection  of  a 
watchmaker  or  a  lapidary,  reading  this  or  that  passage  many  times,  until  he  had 
satisfied  himself  that  no  error  remained  and  that  no  turn  of  expression  could 
well  be  improved.  Before  this  task  was  done,  the  night  had  probably  long  faded 
and  the  early  sun  was  already  lighting  Paris;  but  when  the  Corps  Ldgislatif 
came  to  assemble  at  noon,  the  inexhaustible  septuagenarian  was  at  his  post 
again.  That  evening  he  would  be  found,  the  central  figure  of  a  group,  in  some 
salon,  scattering  his  brilliant  sayings  and  acrid  sarcasms  around  him,  and  in  all 
probability  exercising  his  humor  at  the  expense  of  the  Imperial  Ministers,  the 
Empire,  and  even  the  Emperor  himself.  After  1866  he  was  exuberant  in  his 
bons  mots  about  the  humiliation  of  the  Imperial  Cabinet  by  Prussia.  "Bis- 
marck," he  once  declared,  "is  the  best  supporter  of  the  French  Government. 
He  keeps  it  always  in  its  place  by  first  boxing  it  on  one  ear  and  then  maintain- 
ing the  equilibrium  by  boxing  it  on  the  other." 

If  one  could  have  been  present  at  the  recent  interviews  between  Count  Bis- 
marck and  M.  Thiers,  he  would  doubtless  have  enjoyed  a  curious  and  edifying 
intellectual  treat.  Bismarck  is  a  man  of  imperturbable  good  humor ;  Thiers  a 
man  of  imperturbable  self-conceit.  Thiers  has  a  tongue  which  never  lacks  a 
word,  and  that  the  most  expressive  word.  Bismarck  has  a  rare  gift  of  shrewd 
satirical  humor,  and  of  phrases  that  stick  to  public  memory.  Each  man  would 


LOUIS  ADOLPHE    THIERS.  75 

have  regarded  the  other  as  a  worthy  antagonist  in  a  duel  of  words.  Neither 
would  care  to  waste  much  time  in  lofty  sentiment  and  grandiose  appeals.  Each 
would  thoroughly  understand  that  his  best  motto  would  be,  "A  corsaire,  corsaire 
et  demi."  Bismarck  would  find  in  Thiers  no  feather-headed  Benedetti ;  assured- 
ly, Thiers  would  favor  Bismarck  with  none  of  Jules  Favre's  sighs  and  tears,  and 
bravado  and  choking  emotions.  Thiers  would  have  the  greater  part  of  the  talk, 
that  is  certain  ;  but  Bismarck  would  probably  contrive  to  compress  a  good  deal 
of  meaning  and  significance  into  his  curt  interjected  sentences.  Thiers  as- 
suredly must  have  long  since  worn  out  any  freshness  of  surprise  or  thrilling  emo- 
tion of  any  kind  at  the  political  convulsions  of  France.  To  him  even  the  spec- 
tacle of  the  standard  of  Prussia  hoisted  on  the  pinnacles  of  Versailles  could 
hardly  have  been  an  overpowering  wonder.  He  had  seen  the  soldiers  of  Prussia 
picketed  in  Paris  ;  he  could  remember  when  a  fickle  Parisian  populace,  weary  of 
war,  had  thronged  into  the  streets  to  applaud  the  entrance  of  the  conquering 
Czar  of  Russia.  He  had  seen  the  Bourbon  restored,  and  had  helped  to  over- 
throw him.  He  had  been  twice  the  chief  Minister  of  that  Louis  Philippe  of 
Orleans,  who  in  his  youth  had  had  to  save  the  Princess  his  sister  by  carrying 
her  off  in  her  night-gown,  without  time  to  throw  a  shawl  around  her,  and  whose 
long  years  of  exile  had  led  him,  in  fulfilment  of  the  prophecy  of  Danton,  to 
the  throne  of  France  at  last.  He  had  helped  towards  the  downfall  of  that  same 
King  his  master,  and  had  striven  vainly  at  the  end  to  stand  between  him  and 
his  fate.  He  had  seen  a  second  Republic  rise  and  sink ;  he  had  now  become 
the  envoy  of  a  third  Republic.  He  had  refused  to  serve  an  Imperial  Napoleon, 
although  his  own  teaching  and  preaching  had  been  among  the  most  effective 
agencies  in  debauching  the  mind  and  heart  of  the  nation,  and  thus  rendering  a 
second  Empire  possible.  People  say  M.  Thiers  has  no  feelings,  and  I  shall 
not  venture  to  contradict  them — I  have  often  heard  the  statement  from  those 
who  know  better  than  I  ca»  pretend  to  do.  It  would  have  been  personally  un- 
fortunate for  him  in  his  interview  with  Count  von  Bismarck  if  he  had  been 
burthened  with  feelings.  For  he  must  surely  in  such  a  case  have  felt  bitterly  the 
consciousness  that  the  misfortunes  which  had  fallen  on  his  country  were  in 
great  measure  the  fruit  of  his  own  doctrines  and  his  own  labors.  If  the  public 
conscience  of  France  had  not  been  seared  and  hardened  against  all  sentiment 
of  obligation  to  international  principle,  where  French  glory  and  French  aggran- 
dizement were  concerned  ;  if  France  had  not  learned  to  believe  that  no  foreign 
nation  had  any  rights  which  she  was  bound  to  respect ;  if  she  had  not  been  sat- 
urated with  the  conviction  that  every  benefit  to  a  neighbor  was  an  injury  to  her- 
self; if  she  had  not  accepted  these  views  as  articles  of  national  faith,  and  fol- 
lowed them  out  wherever  she  could  to  their  uttermost  consequences,  then  M. 
Thiers  might  be  said  to  have  written  and  spoken  and  lived  in  vain. 

It  is  probable  that  a  new  career  presents  itself  as  a  possibility  to  the  indom- 
itable energy,  and,  as  many  would  say,  the  insatiable  ambition  of  M.  Thiers. 
Certainly,  there  seems  not  the  faintest  indication  that  the  veteran  believes  him- 
self to  lag  superfluous  on  the  stage.  It  is  likely  that  he  rushed  into  the  recent 
peace  negotiations  with  the  hope  of  playing  over  again  the  part  so  skilfully 
played  by  Talleyrand  at  the  time  of  the  Congress  of  Vienna,  by  virtue  of  which 
France  obtained  so  much  advantage  which  might  hardly  have  been  expected, 
and  Germany  got  so  little  of  what  she  might  naturally  have  looked  for.  I  cer- 
tainly shall  riot  venture  to  say  whether  M.  Thiers  may  not  even  yet  have  an 
important  official  career  before  him.  His  recent  enterprises  and  expeditions 
give  evidence  enough  that  he  has  nerve  and  physique  for  any  undertaking  likely 
to  attract  him,  and  I  see  no  reason  to  doubt  that  his  intellect  is  as  fresh  and 


76  LOUIS  ADOLPHE  THIKRS. 

active  as  it  was  thirty  years  ago.  Thiers  deserves  nothing  but  honor  for  the  un- 
conquerable energy  and  courage  which  refuse  to  yield  to  years,  and  will  not  ac- 
knowledge the  triumph  of  time.  He  would  deserve  far  greater  honor  still  if 
we  could  regard  him  as  a  disinterested  patriot ;  highest  honor  of  all  if  his  prin- 
ciples were  as  wise  and  just  as  his  ambition  was  unselfish.  But  charity  itself 
could  hardly  hope  to  reconcile  the  facts  of  M.  Thiers's  long  and  varied  career 
with  any  theory  ascribing  to  the  man  himself  a  pure  and  disinterested  purpose. 
That  a  statesman  has  changed  his  opinions  is  often  his  highest  glory,  if,  as  in  the 
case  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  he  has  thereby  grown  into  the  light  and  the  right.  Not 
is  a  change  of  views  necessarily  a  reproach  to  a  politician,  even  though  he  may  have 
retrograded  or  gone  wrong.  But  the  man  who  is  invariably  a  passionate  liberal 
when  out  of  office,  and  a  severe  conservative  when  in  power;  who  makes  it  a 
regular  practice  to  have  one  set  of  opinions  while  he  leads  the  opposition,  and 
another  when  he  has  succeeded  in  mounting  to  the  lead  of  a  ministry  ;  such  a  man 
cannot  possibly  hope  to  obtain  for  such  systematic  alternations  the  credit  of  even 
a  capricious  and  fantastic  sincerity.  No  one  who  knows  anything  of  M.  Thiers 
would  consent  thus  to  exalt  his  heart  at  the  expense  of  his  head.  When  the  late 
Lord  Cardigan  was,  rightly  or  wrongly,  accused  of  having  returned  rather  too 
quickly  from  the  famous  charge  of  the  Light  Brigade  at  Balaklava,  his  lordship, 
among  other  things,  alleged  that  his  horse  had  run  away  with  him.  A  bitter  critic 
thereupon  declared  that  Lord  Cardigan  could  not  be  allowed  thus  unfairly  to  de- 
preciate his  consummate  horsemanship,  I  am  afraid  we  cannot  allow  M.  Thiers's 
intelligence  and  shrewdness  to  be  unjustly  depreciated  by  the  assumption  that 
his  political  tergiversations  were  the  result  of  meaningless  caprice. 

M.  Thiers  is  one  of  the  most  gifted  men  of  his  day.  But  he  is  not,  in  my 
judgment,  a  great  man.  He  wants  altogether  the  grand  and  stable  qualities  of 
principle  and  judgment  which  are  needed  to  constitute  political  greatness. 
His  statesmanship  is  a  sort  of  policy  belonging  apparently  to  the  school  of  the 
Lower  Empire  ;  a  Byzantine  blending  of  intrigue  and  impudence.  He  has 
never  had  the  faculty  of  reading  the  signs  of  the  times,  or  of  understanding  that 
to-day  is  not  necessarily  like  yesterday.  But  for  the  wonderful  gifts  of  the 
man,  there  would  seem  to  be  something  positively  childish  in  the  egotism  which 
could  believe  that  it  lay  in  the  power  of  Franco  to  maintain,  despite  of  destiny, 
the  petty  princes  of  Germany  and  Italy,  to  arrange  the  political  conditions  of 
England,  and  prescribe  to  the  United  States  how  far  their  principle  of  internal 
coheson  should  reach.  Victor  Hugo  is  undoubtedly  an  egotistic  Frenchman. 
Some  of  his  recent  utterances  have  been  foolish  and  ridiculous.  But  the  folly 
has  been  that  of  a  great  soul  ;  the  folly  has  consisted  in  appealing,  out  of  all 
time  and  place,  to  sublime  and  impracticable  sentiments  of  human  brotherhood 
and  love  which  ought  to  influence  all  human  souls,  but  do  not  and  probably 
never  will.  Far  different  is  the  egotism  of  Thiers.  It  is  the  egotism  of  selfish- 
ness, arrogance,  and  craft.  In  a  sublime  world,  Victor  Hugo's  appeals  would 
cease  to  be  ridiculous  ;  but  the  nobler  the  world,  the  more  ignoble  would  seem 
the  doctrines  and  the  policy  of  Thiers.  My  own  admiration  of  Thiers  extends 
only  to  his  skill  as  a  debater  and  his  marvellous  intellectual  vitality.  The  man 
who,  despite  the  most  disheartening  disadvantages  of  presence,  voice,  and  man- 
ner, is  yet  the  most  fascinating  political  debater  of  his  time,  the  man  who  at 
seventy-three  years  of  age  can  go  up  in  a  balloon  in  quest  of  a  new  career,  must 
surely  command  some  interest  and  admiration,  let  critical  wisdom  preach  to  us 
never  so  wisely.  But  the  best  days  will  have  arisen  for  France  when  such  a 
political  character  and  such  a  literary  career  as  those  of  M.  Thiers  shall  have 
become  an  anachronism  and  an  impossibility. 


PRINCE   NAPOLEON. 


SOME  few  years  ago,  seven  or  eight  perhaps,  a  certain  sensation  was  created 
among  artists,  and  journalists,  and  literary  men,  and  connoisseurs,  and 
critics,  by  one  of  Flandrin's  best  portraits.  Undoubtedly,  the  portrait  was  an 
admirable  likeness  ;  no  one  who  had  ever  seen  the  original  could  deny  or  ques- 
tion that ;  but  yet  there  was  an  air,  a  character,  a  certain  depth  of  idealized  ex- 
pression about  it  which  seemed  to  present  the  subject  in  a  new  light,  and  threw 
one  into  a  kind  of  doubt  as  to  whether  he  had  ever  truly  understood  the  original 
before.  Either  the  painter  had  unduly  glorified  his  sitter,  or  the  sitter  had  im- 
pressed upon  the  artist  a  true  idea  of  his  character  and  intellect  which  had  never 
before  been  revealed  to  the  public  at  large.  The  portrait  was  that  of  a  man  of  mid- 
dle age,  with  a  smooth,  broad,  thoughtful  brow,  a  character  of  command  about 
the  finely-formed,  somewhat  sensuous  lips  ;  chin  and  nose  beautifully  moulded, 
in  fact  what  ladies  who  write  novels  would  call  "chiselled  ;  "  a  face  degenerat- 
ing a  little  into  mere  flesh,  but  still  dignified  and  imposing.  Everywhere  over 
the  face  there  was  a  tone  of  dissatisfaction,  of  disappointment,  of  sullenness 
mingling  strangely  with  the  sensuous  characteristics,  and  conveying  somehow  the 
idea  of  great  power  and  daring  ambition  unduly  repressed  by  outward  condi- 
tions, or  rendered  barren  by  inward  defects,  or  actually  frustrated  by  failure  and 
fate.  "  A  Caesar  out  of  employment !  "  exclaimed  a  celebrated  French  author 
and  critic.  So  much  there  was  of  the  Caesar  in  the  face  that  no  school-boy,  no 
Miss  in  her  teens  could  have  even  glanced  at  it  without  saying,  "  That  is  the  face 
of  a  Bonaparte  ! "  Were  not  the  features  a  little  too  massive,  it  might  have 
passed  for  an  admirable  likeness  of  the  victor  of  Austerlitz  ;  or,  at  all  events,  of 
the  Napoleon  of  Leipzig  or  the  Hundred  Days.  Probably  any  ordinary  observ- 
er would  at  once  have  set  it  down  as  a  portrait  of  the  great  Napoleon,  and 
never  thought  there  could  be  any  doubt  about  the  matter.  It  was,  in  fact,  the 
likeness  of  Napoleon-Jerome,  son  of  the  rattle-pate  King  of  Westphalia — 
Prince  Napoleon,  as  he  is  ordinarily  called,  the  Plon-plon  whom  soldiers  jeer 
at,  the  "Red  Prince"  whom  priests  and  Legitimists  denounce,  the  cousin  of  the 
Emperor  of  the  French,  the  son-in-law  of  the  King  of  Italy. 

It  was  only  somewhere  about,  or  a  little  before  the  time  of  the  Flandrin  por- 
trait, that  Prince  Napoleon  had  the  honor  of  becoming  a  mystery  in  the  eyes  of 
the  public.  Up  to  1860,  his  character  was  quite  settled  in  public  estimation,  just 
as  that  of  Louis  Napoleon  had  been  up  to  the  time  of  the  coup  d'etat.  Public 
opinion  generally  settles  the  characters  of  conspicuous  men  at  first  by  the  intuitive 
process — the  most  delightful  and  easy  method  possible,  dispensing,  as  it  does, 
with  any  necessity  for  studying  the  subject,  or  even  knowing  anything  at  all 
about  it.  When  the  intuitive  process  has  once  adjusted  a  man's  character,  it  is 
not  easy  to  get  people  to  believe  in  any  other  adjustment.  Still,  there  are  some 
remarkable  instances  of  a  change  in  popular  opinion.  The  case  of  Louis  Napo- 
leon, the  Emperor,  is  one  illustration  ;  that  of  Prince  Napoleon,  his  cousin,  is 
another,  not  so  remarkable,  certainly,  but  still  quile  worthy  of  some  attention. 

Prince  Napoleon  had  been  before  the  world  more  or  less  since  he  appeared 
as  representative  of  Corsica,  in  the  Constituent  Assembly  of  1848.  He  was 
made  conspicuous,  in  a  negative  sort  of  way,  by  having  had  no  hand  in  the  coup 
d'etat,  or  having  even  opposed  it,  although  he  did  not  scruple  to  profit  by  its 


78  PRINCE  NAPOLEON. 

success  and  enjoy  its  golden  advantages.  He  had  a  command  in  the  Crimean 
war;  he  was  sent  into  Tuscany  during  the  Italian  campaign.  All  that  time 
public  opinion  in  Europe  was  unanimous  about  him.  He  was  a  sensualist,  a 
coward,  an  imbecile,  and  a  blockhead.  He  was.  a  fat,  stupid,  muddle-headed 
Heliogabalus.  Dulness,  cowardice,  and  profligacy  were  his  principal,  perhaps 
his  only  characteristics.  When  the  young  Clotilde,  of  Savoy,  was  given  to  him 
for  a  wife,  a  positive  cry  of  wonder  and  disgust  went  up  from  every  country  of 
Europe.  In  good  truth,  it  was  a  scandalous  thing  to  marry  a  young  and  inno- 
cent girl  to  a  man  nearly  as  old  as  her  father  ;  and  who,  undoubtedly,  had  been 
a  rna.uva.is  sujet,  and  had  led  a  life  of  dissipation  so  far.  But  Europe  cried 
aloud  as  if  three  out  of  every  four  princely  alliances  were  not  made  on  the  same 
principle  and  endowed  with  the  same  character.  Had  the  Princess  Clotilde  been 
affianced  to  a  hog  or  a  gorilla,  there  could  hardly  have  been  greater  wonder  and 
horror  expressed,  so  clear  was  the  public  mind  about  the  stupidity  and  brutality 
of  Prince  Napoleon. 

Certainly,  if  one  looked  a  little  deeper  than  mere  public  opinion,  he  would 
have  found,  even  then,  that  here  and  there  some  men,  not  quite  incapable  of 
iudging,  did  not  accept  the  popular  estimate  of  the  Emperor's  cousin.  All 
through  the  memorable  progress  of  the  Congress  of  Paris — out  of  which  sprang 
Italy — we  find,  by  the  documents  subsequently  made  public,  that  Cavour  was  in 
close  and  frequent  consultation  with  Prince  Napoleon.  Once  we  find  Cavour 
saying  that  Prince  Napoleon  complains  of  his  slowness,  his  too  great  modera- 
tion, and  thinks  he  could  serve  the  cause  better  by  a  little  more  boldness.  "  Per- 
haps he  is  right,"  says  Cavour,  in  words  to  that  effect ;  "  but  I  fear  I  lack  his 
force  of  character,  his  daringness  of  purpose."  Richard  Cobden  makes  the 
acquaintance  of  Prince  Napoleon,  and  is  surprised  and  delighted  with  his  ad- 
vanced opinions  on  the  subject  of  free  trade  ;  and  deliberately  describes  him  (I 
heard  Cobden  use  the  words)  as  "one  of  the  best  informed,  if  not  the  very  best 
informed,  of  all  the  public  men  of  Europe."  Kinglake  observes  the  Prince  dur- 
ing the  Crimean  campaign — where  Napoleon-Jerome  got  his  reputation  for 
cowardice  and  his  nick-name  of  Plon-plon — and  finds  in  him  a  genius  very  like 
that  of  his  uncle,  the  great  Napoleon,  especially  a  wonderful  power  of  distin- 
guishing at  a  glance  between  the  essentials  and  the  accidentals  of  any  question 
or  situation — and  any  one  who  has  ever  studied  politics  and  public  men  will  know 
how  rare  a  faculty  that  is — and  finally  declares  that  he  sees  no  reason  to  be- 
lieve him  inferior  in  courage  to  the  conqueror  of  Marengo  !  Edmond  About, 
not  a  very  dull  personage,  and  not  quite  given  up  to  panegyric,  bursts  into  a 
strain  of  almost  lyrical  enthusiasm  about  the  wit,  the  brilliancy,  the  culture,  the 
daring  ambition  of  Prince  Napoleon,  and  declares  that  the  Prince  is  kept  as 
much  out  of  the  way  as  possible,  because  a  man  endowed  with  a  soul  of  such 
unresting  energy,  and  the  face  of  the  great  Emperor,  is  too  formidable  a  per- 
sonage to  be  seen  hanging  about  the  steps  of  a  throne.  To  close  this  string  of 
illustrations,  Prince  Napoleon  is  in  somewhat  frequent  and  confidential  inter- 
course with  Michel  Chevalier,  a  man  not  likely  to  cultivate  the  society  of  heavy 
blockheads  and  dullards,  even  though  these  might  happen  to  wear  princely 
coronets.  Clearly,  public  opinion  here  was  even  more  directly  at  odds  than  it 
often  is  with  the  opinion  of  some  whom  we  may  call  experts  ;  and  the  difference 
was  so  great  that  there  seemed  no  possible  way  of  reconciling  the  two.  A  man 
may  be  a  profligate  and  yet  a  man  of  genius,  and  even  a  patriot ;  but  one  cannot 
be  a  profligate  blockhead  and  a  man  of  genius,  a  Cloten  and  an  Alcibiades,  a 
Caesar  and  a  Pyrgopolinices  at  once. 


PRINCE  NAPOLEON.  79 

It  was  in  the  early  part  of  1861  that  Prince  Napoleon  contributed  some- 
thing of  his  own  spontaneous  motion  to  help  in  the  solution  of  the  enigma. 
That  was  the  year  when  the  Emperor  removed  the  restriction  which  prevented 
both  Chambers  of  the  Legislature  from  freely  debating  the  address,  and  the 
press  from  fully  reporting  the  discussions.  There  was  a  remarkable  debate  in 
the  Senate,  ranging  over  a  great  variety  of  domestic  and  foreign  questions,  and 
one  most  memorable  event  of  the  debate  was  the  brilliant,  powerful  and  exhaust- 
ive oration  delivered,  with  splendid  energy  and  rhetorical  effect,  by  Prince  Na- 
poleon. Mon  ane  parle  et  meme  il  parle  bien,  declares  the  astonished  Joan,  in 
Voltaire's  scandalous  poem,  "  La  Pucelle."  Perhaps  there  was  something  of  a 
similar  wonder  mingled  with  the  burst  of  genuine  admiration  which  went  up  first 
from  Paris,  then  from  France,  and  finally  from  Europe  and  America,  when  that 
magnificent  democratic  manifesto  came  to  be  read.  Certainly,  I  remember  no 
single  speech  which,  during  my  time,  created  anything  like  the  same  sensation 
in  Europe.  For  it  took  the  outer  world  wholly  by  surprise.  It  was  not  a 
case  like  that  of  the  sensation  lately  created  by  the  florid  and  fervid  eloquence 
of  the  young  Spanish  orator,  Castellar.  In  this  latter  case  the  public  were  sur- 
prised and  delighted  to  find  that  there  was  a  master  of  thrilling  rhetoric  alive, 
and  arrayed  on  the  side  of  democratic  freedom,  of  whose  very  existence  most 
persons  had  been  previously  ignorant.  But,  in  the  case  of  Prince  Napoleon, 
the  surprise  was,  that  a  man  whom  the  public  had  long  known,  and  always 
set  down  as  a  stupid  sensualist,  should  suddenly,  and  without  any  previous 
warning,  turn  out  a  great  orator,  whose  eloquence  had  in  it  something  so  fresh, 
and  genuine,  and  forcible  that  it  recalled  the  memory  of  the  most  glorious  days 
of  the  French  Tribune.  I  write  of  this  celebrated  oration  now  only  from  rec- 
ollection ;  and,  of  course,  I  did  not  hear  it  spoken.  I  say  "  of  course,"  because 
the  rules  of  the  French  Senate,  unlike  those  of  the  Corps  Legislatif,  forbid  the 
presence  of  any  strangers  during  the  debates.  But  those  who  heard  it  spoke  en- 
thusiastically of  the  force  and  freedom  with  which  it  was  delivered  ;  the  sudden, 
impulsive  fervor  of  occasional  outbursts  ;  and  the  wonderful  readiness  with 
which  the  speaker,  when  interrupted,  as  he  was  very  frequently,  passed  from  one 
topic  to  another  in  order  to  dispose  of  the  interruption,  and  replied  to  sudden 
challenge  with  even  prompter  repartee.  No  one  could  read  the  speech  without 
admiring  the  extent  and  variety  of  the  political  knowledge  it  displayed  ;  the  prod- 
igality of  illustration  it  flung  over  every  argument ;  the  thrilling  power  of  some 
of  its  rhetorical  "  phrases  ; "  the  tone  of  sustained  and  passionate  eloquence 
which  made  itself  heard  all  throughout ;  and,  perhaps  above  all, that  flexible,  spon- 
taneous readiness  of  language  and  resource  to  which  every  interruption,  every 
interjected  question  only  acted  like  a  spur  to  a  generous  horse,  calling  forth  new 
and  greater,  and  wholly  unexpected  efforts.  In  the  French  Senate  I  need,  per- 
haps, hardly  tell  my  readers,  it  is  the  habit  to  allow  the  utmost  license  of  in- 
terruption, and  Prince  Napoleon's  audacious  onslaught  on  the  reactionists  and 
the  parti  pretre  called  out  even  an  unusual  amount  of  impatient  utterance. 
Those  who  interrupted  took  little  by  their  motion.  The  energetic  Prince  tossed 
off  his  assailants  as  a  bull  flings  the  dogs  away  on  the  points  of  his  horns.  "  Our 
principles  are  not  yours,"  scornfully  exclaims  a  Legitimist  nobleman — the  late 
Marquis  de  la  Rochejaquelein,  if  I  remember  rightly.  "  Your  principles  are  not 
ours  ! "  vehemently  replies  the  orator.  "  No,  nor  are  your  antecedents  ours. 
Our  pride  is  that  our  fathers  fell  on  the  battle-field  resisting  the  foreign  invaders 
whom  your  fathers  brought  in  for  the  subjugation  of  France  ! "  The  speech 
is  studded  with  sudden  replies  equally  fervid  and  telling.  Indeed,  the  whole 


80  PRINCE  NAPOLEON. 

material  of  the  oration  is  rich,  strong,  and  genuine.  There  seems  to  be  in  the 
eloquence  of  the  French  Chambers,  of  late,  a  certain  want  of  freshness  and 
natural  power.  I  do  not  speak  of  Berryer — he  had  no  such  want.  But  Thiers 
• — by  far  the  ablest  living  debater  who  speaks  only  from  preparation — with  all 
his  wonderful  science  and  skill  as  an  artist  in  debate,  appears  to  be  always  some- 
what artificial  and  elaborate.  Jules  Favre,  with  his  exquisitely  modulated 
tones,  and  his  unrivalled  choice  of  words,  hardly  ever  appears  to  me  to  rise  to 
that  height  where  the  orator,  lost  in  his  subject,  compels  his  hearers  to  lose  them- 
selves also  in  it.  Now,  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  two  or  three  really  great 
speeches  made  by  Prince  Napoleon  had  in  them  more  of  the  native  fibre,  force 
and  passion  of  oratory  than  those  of  almost  any  Frenchman  since  the  days  of 
Mirabeau. 

However  that  may  be,  the  effect  wrought  on  the  public  mind  was  unmistaka- 
ble. Plon-plon  had  startled  Europe.  He  entered  the  palace  of  the  Luxem- 
bourg on  that  memorable  day  without  any  repute  but  that  of  a  dullard  and  a 
sensualist ;  he  came  out  of  it  a  recognized  orator.  I  have  been  told  that  he  lay 
back  in  his  open  carriage  and  smoked  his  cigar,  as  he  drove  home  from  the  Sen- 
ate, to  all  appearance  the  same  indolent,  sullen,  heavy  apathetic  personage 
whom  all  Paris  had  previously  known  and  despised. 

One  notable  effect  of  this  famous  speech  was  the  reply  which  a  certain  pas- 
sage in  it  drew  from  Louis  Philippe's  son,  the  Due  d'Aumale.  Prince  Napo- 
leon had  indulged  in  a  bitter  sneer  or  two  against  former  dynasties,  and  the  Due 
d'Aumale,  a  man  of  great  culture  and  ability,  took  up  the  quarrel  fiercely.  The 
Duke  assailed  Prince  Napoleon  in  one  of  the  keenest,  most  biting  pamphlets 
which  the  political  controversy  of  our  day  has  produced.  Among  other  things, 
the  Duke  replied  to  a  supposed  imputation  on  the  weakness  of  Louis  Philippe 
by  admitting,  frankly,  that  the  bourgeois  King  had  not  dealt  with  enemies,  when 
in  his  power,  as  a  Bonaparte  would  have  done.  "  Et  tenez,  Prince,"  wrote  the 
Duke,  "  the  only  time  when  the  word  of  a  Bonaparte  may  be  believed  is  when 
he  avows  that  he  will  never  spare  a  defenceless  enemy."  The  pamphlet 
bristled  with  points  equally  sharp  and  envenomed.  But  the  Due  d'Aumale  was 
not  content  with  written  rejoinder.  He  sent  a  challenge  to  the  Prince,  and  in 
serious  earnest.  The  Prince,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  did  not  accept  the  chal- 
lenge. 

Yes,  like  enough,  high-battled  Caesar  will 
Unstate  his  greatness,  and  be  staged  to  the  show 
Against  a  sworder  ! 

Our  Caesar,  though  not  "high-battled,"  was  by  no  means  likely  to  consent  to 
be  "  staged  against  a  sworder."  The  Emperor  hastened  to  prevent  any  disastrous 
consequences,  by  insisting  that  the  Prince  must  not  accept  the  challenge — and 
there  was  no  duel.  People  winked  and  sneered  a  good  deal.  It  is  said  that  the 
martial  King  Victor  Emmanuel  grumbled  and  chafed  at  his  son-in-law  ;  but  there 
was  no  fight.  Let  me  say,  for  my  own  part,  that  I  think  Prince  Napoleon  was 
quite  right  in  not  accepting  the  challenge,  and  that  I  do  not  believe  him  to  be 
wanting  in  personal  courage. 

From  that  moment,  Prince  Napoleon  became  a  conspicuous  figure  in  European 
politics,  and  when  any  great  question  arose,  men  turned  anxiously  toward  him, 
curious  to  know  what  he  would  do  or  say.  In  three  or  four  successive  sessions 
he  spoke  in  the  Senate,  and  even  with  the  impression  of  the  first  surprise  still 
strong  on  the  public  mind,  the  speeches  preserved  abundantly  the  reputation 
which  the  earliest  of  them  had  so  suddenly  created.  He  might  be  the  enfant 
terrible  of  the  Bonaparte  family  ;  he  might  be  utterly  wanting  in  statesmanship  ; 


PRINCE  .NAPOLEON.  81 

he  might  be  insincere  ;  he  might  be  physically  a  coward  ;  but  all  the  world  now 
admitted  him  to  be  an  orator,  and,  in  his  way,  a  man  of  genius. 

Then  it  became  known  to  the  public,  all  at  once,  that  the  Prince,  whatever 
his  failings,  had  some  rare  gifts  besides  that  of  eloquence.  He  was  undoubtedly 
a  man  of  exquisite  taste  in  all  things  artistic ;  he  had  an  intelligent  and  liberal 
knowledge  of  practical  science  ;  he  had  a  great  faculty  of  organization  ;  he  was  a 
keen  humorjst  and  wit.  He  loved  the  society  of  artists,  and  journalists,  and  lit- 
erary men  ;  he  associated  with  them  en  ban  camerade,  and  he  could  talk  with 
each  upon  his  own  subject  ;  his  bon  mots  soon  began  to  circulate  far  and  wide. 
He  was  a  patron  of  Revolution.  In  the  innermost  privacy  of  the  Palais  Royal 
men  like  Mieroslawski,  the  Polish  Red  Revolutionist,  men  like  General  Tiirr, 
unfolded  and  discussed  their  plans.  Prince  Gortschakoff,  in  his  despatches  at 
the  time  of  the  Polish  Rebellion,  distinctly  pointed  to  the  palace  of  Prince  Na- 
poleon as  the  headquarters  of  the  insurrection.  The  "  Red  Prince"  grew  to  be 
one  of  the  mysterious  figures  in  European  policy.  Was  he  in  league  with  his 
cousin,  the  Emperor — or  was  he  his  cousin's  enemy  ?  Did  he  hope,  on  the 
strength  of  that  Bonaparte  face,  and  his  secret  league  with  Democracy,  to  mount 
one  day  from  the  steps  of  the  throne  to  the  throne  itself?  Between  him  and  the 
succession  to  that  throne  intervened  only  the  life  of  one  frail  boy.  Was  Prince 
Napoleon  preparing  for  the  day  when  he  might  play  the  part  of  a  Gloster  (with- 
out the  smothering),  and,  pushing  the  boy  aside,  succeed  to  the  crown  of  the  great 
Emperor  whom  in  face  he  so  strikingly  resembled  ? 

At  last  came  the  celebrated  Ajaccio  speech.  The  Emperor  had  gone  to  visit 
Algeria  ;  the  Prince  went  to  deliver  an  oration  at  the  inauguration  of  a  monument 
to  Napoleon  I.,  at  Ajaccio.  The  speech  was,  in  brief,  a  powerful,  passion- 
ate denunciation  of  Austria,  and  the  principles  which  Austria  represented  be- 
fore Sadowa' taught  her  a  lesson  of  tardy  wisdom.  Viewed  as  the  exposition  of 
a  professor  of  history,  one  might  fairly  acknowledge  the  Prince's  speech  to  have 
illustrated  eloquently  some  solid  and  stern  truths,  which  Europe  would  have  done 
well  even  then  to  consider  deeply.  Subsequent  events  have  justified  and  illu- 
minated many  of  what  then  seemed  the  most  startling  utterances  of  the  orator. 
Austria,  for  example,  practically  admits,  by  her  present  policy,  the  justice  of  much 
that  Prince  Napoleon  pleaded  against  her.  But  as  the  speech  of  the  Emperor's 
cousin  ;  of  one  who  stood  in  near  order  of  succession  to  the  throne  ;  of  one  who 
had  only  just  been  raised  to  an  office  in  the  State  so  high  that  in  the  absence  of 
the  sovereign  it  made  him  seem  the  sovereign's  proper  representative,  it  was 
undoubtedly  a  piece  of  marvellous  indiscretion.  Europe  stood  amazed  at  its 
outspoken  audacity.  The  Emperor  could  not  overlook  it ;  and  he  publicly  repu- 
diated it.  Prince  Napoleon  resigned  his  public  offices — including  that  of  Presi- 
dent of  the  Commissioners  of  the  International  Exhibition,  which  undertaking 
suffered  sadly  from  lack  of  his  organizing  capacity  and  his  admirable  taste  and 
judgment — and  the  Imperial  orator  of  Democracy  disappeared  from  the  public 
stage  as  suddenly,  and  amid  as  much  tumult,  as  he  had  entered  upon  it. 

Prince  Napoleon  has,  indeed,  been  taken  into  favor  since  by  his  Imperial 
cousin,  and  has  been  sent  on  one  or  two  missions,  more  or  less  important  or 
mysterious  ;  but  he  has  never,  from  the  date  of  the  Ajaccio  speech  up  to  the  pres- 
ent moment,  played  any  important  part  as  a  public  man.  He  is  not,  however, 
"played  out."  His  energy,  his  ambition,  his  ability,  will  assuredly  bring  him 
prominently  before  the  public  again.  Let  us,  meanwhile,  endeavor  to  set  before 
the  readers  of  THE  GALAXY  a  fair  and  true  picture  of  the  man,  free  alike  from 
the  exaggerated  proportions  which  wondering  quidnuncs  or  parasites  attribute 


82  PRINCE  NAPOLEON. 

to  him,  and  from  the  distortions  of  unfriendly  painters.  Exaggeration  of  both 
kinds  apart,  Prince  Napoleon  is  really  one  of  the  most  remarkable  figures  on  the 
present  stage  of  French  history.  He  is,  at  least,  a  man  of  great  possibilities. 
Let  us  try  to  ascertain  fairly  what  he  is,  and  what  are  his  chances  for  the  future. 
Born  of  a  hair-brained,  eccentric,  adventure-seeking,  negligent,  selfish  father, 
Prince  Napoleon  had  little  of  the  advantages  of  a  home  education.  His  boyhood, 
his  youth,  were  passed  in  a  vagrant  kind  of  way,  ranging  from  country,  to  country, 
from  court  to  court.  He  started  in  life  with  great  natural  talents,  a  strong  ten- 
dency to  something  not  very  unlike  rowdyism,  an  immense  ambition,  an  almost 
equally  vast  indolence,  a  deep  and  genuine  love  of  arts,  letters,  and  luxury,  an 
eccentric,  fitful  temper,  and  a  predominant  pride  in  that  relationship  to  the  great 
Emperor  which  is  so  plainly  stamped  upon  his  face.  Without  entering  into  any 
questions  of  current  scandal,  everybody  must  know  that  Napoleon  III.  has 
nothing  of  the  Bonaparte  in  his  face,  a  fact  on  which  Prince  Napoleon,  in  his 
e.irlier  and  wilder  days,  was  not  always  very  slow  to  comment.  Indolence,  love 
of  luxury,  and  a  capricious  temper  have,  perhaps,  been  the  chief  enemies  which 
have  hitherto  prevented  the  latter  from  fulfilling  any  high  ambition.  It  would  be 
affectation  to  ignore  the  fact  that  Prince  Napoleon  flung  many  years  away  in  mere 
dissipation.  Stories  are  told  in  Paris  which  would  represent  him  almost  as  a 
Vitellius  or  an  Egalitd  in  profligacy — stories  some  of  which  simply  transcend 
belief  by  their  very  monstrosity.  Even  to  this  day,  to  this  hour,  it  is  the  firm 
conviction  of  the  general  public  that  the  Emperor's  cousin  is  steeped  to  the  lips  in 
sensuality.  Now,  rejecting,  of  course,  a  huge  mass  of  this  scandal,  it  is  certain 
that  Prince  Napoleon  was,  for  a  long  time,  a  downright  mauvais  sujet;  it  is  by  no 
means  certain  that  he  has,  even  at  his  present  mature  age,  discarded  all  his  evil 
habits.  His  temper  is  much  against  him.  People  habitually  contrast  the  un- 
varying courtesy  and  self-control  of  the  Emperor  with  the  occasional  brusqueness, 
and  even  rudeness,  of  the  Prince.  True  that  Prince  Napoleon  can  be  frankly 
and  warmly  familiar  with  his  intimates,  and  even  that,  like  Prince  Hal,  he  some- 
times encourages  a  degree  of  familiarity  which  hardly  tends  to  mutual  respect. 
But  the  outer  world  cannot  always  rely  on  him.  He  can  be  undiplomatically 
rough  and  hot,  and  he  has  a  gift  of  biting  jest  which  is  perhaps  one  of  the  most 
dangerous  qualities  a  statesman  can  cultivate.  Then  there  is  a  personal  restless- 
ness about  him  which  even  princes  cannot  afford  safely  to  indulge.  He  has 
hardly  ever  had  any  official  position  assigned  to  him  which  he  did  not  sometime  or 
other  scornfully  abandon  on  the  spur  of  some  sudden  impulse.  The  Madrid  em- 
bassy in  former  days,  the  Algerian  administration,  the  Crimean  command — these 
and  ojher  offices  he  only  accepted  to  resign.  He  has  wandered  more  widely  over 
the  face  of  the  earth  than  any  other  living  prince — probably  than  any  other  prince 
that  ever  lived.  It  used  to  be  humorously  said  of  him  that  he  was  qualifying  to 
become  a  teacher  of  geography,  in  the  event  of  fortune  once  more  driving  the  race 
of  Bonaparte  into  exile  and  obscurity.  What  port  is  there  that  has  not  sheltered 
l.is  wandering  yacht  ?  He  has  pleasant  dwellings  enough  to  induce  a  man  to 
stay  at  home.  His  Palais  Royal  is  one  of  the  most  elegant  and  tasteful  abodes 
belonging  to  a  European  prince.  The  stranger  in  Paris  who  is  fortunate  enough 
to  obtain  admission  to  it — and,  indeed,  admission  is  easy  to  procure — must  be 
sadly  wanting  in  taste  if  he  does  not  admire  the  treasures  of  art  and  vertti  which 
are  laid  up  there,  and  the  easy,  graceful  manner  of  their  arrangement.  Nothing 
of  the  air  of  the  show-place  is  breathed  there  ;  no  rules,  no  conditions,  no  watchful, 
dogging  lacqueys  or  sentinels  make  the  visitor  uncomfortable.  Once  admitted,  the 
stranger  goes  where  he  will,  and  admires  and  examines  what  he  pleases.  He  finds 


PRINCE  NAPOLEON.  83 

there  curiosities  and  relics,  medals  and  statues,  bronzes  and  stor._.»  irom  every 
land  in  which  history  or  romance  takes  any  interest ;  he  gazes  on  the  latest  ar- 
tistic successes — Dora's  magnificent  lights  and  shadows,  GeVome's  audacious 
nudities  ;  he  observes  autograph  collections  of  value  inestimable  ;  he  notices  that 
on  the  tables,  here  and  there,  lie  the  newest  triumphs  or  sensations  of  literature — 
the  poem  that  every  one  is  just  talking  of,  the  play  that  fills  the  theatres,  George 
Sand's  last  novel,  Re'nan's  new  volume,  Taine's  freshest  criticism :  he  is  im- 
pressed everywhere  with  the  conviction  that  he  is  in  the  house  of  a  man  of  high 
culture  and  active  intellect,  who  keeps  up  with  the  progress  of  the  world  in  arts, 
and  letters,  and  politics.  Then  there  was,  until  lately,  the  famous  Pompeiian  Pal- 
ace, in  one  of  the  avenues  of  the  Champs  Elyse'es,  which  ranked  among  the 
curiosities  of  Paris,  but  which  Prince  Napoleon  has  at  last  chosen,  or  been  com- 
pelled, to  sell.  On  the  Swiss  shore  of  the  lake  of  Geneva,  one  of  the  most  re- 
markable objects  that  attract  the  eye  of  the  tourist  who  steams  from  Geneva  to 
Lausanne,  is  La  Bergerie,  the  palace  of  Prince  Napoleon.  But  the  owner  of  these 
palaces  spends  little  of  his  time  in  them.  His  wife,  the  Princess  Clotilde,  stays  at 
home  and  delights  in  her  children,  and  shows  them  with  pride  to  her  visitors,  while 
her  restless  husband  is  steaming  in  and  out  of  the  ports  of  the  Mediterranean,  the 
Black  Sea,  or  the  Baltic.  Prince  Napoleon  has  not  found  his  place  yet,  say 
Edmond  About  and  other  admirers — when  he  does  he  will  settle  firmly  to  it. 
He  is  a  restless,  unmanageable  idler  and  scamp,  say  his  enemies — unstable  as 
water,  he  shall  not  excel.  Meanwhile  years  go  by,  and  Prince  Napoleon  has 
'ong  left  even  the  latest  verge  of  youth  behind  him  ;  and  he  is  only  a  possibility 
as  yet,  and  is  popular  with  no  political  party  in  France. 

Strange  that  this  avowed  and  ostentatious  Democrat,  this  eloquent,  powerful 
spokesman  of  French  Radicalism,  is  not  popular  even  with  Democrats  and  Red 
Republicans.  They  do  not  trust  him.  They  cannot  understand  how  he  can 
honestly  extend  one  hand  to  Democracy,  while  in  the  other  he  receives  the  mag- 
nificent revenues  assigned  to  him  by  Despotism.  One  might  have  thought  that 
nothing  would  be  more  easy  than  for  this  man,  with  his  daring,  his  ambition,  his 
brilliant  talents,  his  commanding  eloquence,  his  democratic  principles,  and  his 
Napoleon  face,  to  make  himself  the  idol  of  French  Democracy.  Yet  he  has 
utterly  failed  to  do  so.  As  a  politician,  he  has  almost  invariably  upheld  the 
rightful  cause,  and  accurately  foretold  the  course  of  events.  He  believed  in  the 
possibility  of  Italy's  resurrection  long  before  there  was  any  idea  of  his  becom- 
ing son-in-law  to  a  King  of  Italy;  he  has  been  one  of  the  most  earnest  friends 
of  the  cause  of  Poland  ;  he  saw  long  ago  what  every  one  sees  now,  that  the  fall 
of  the  Austrian  system  was  an  absolute  necessity  to  the  progress  of  Europe ; 
he  was  a  steady  supporter  of  the  American  Union,  and  when  it  was  the  fashion 
in  France,  as  in  England,  to  regard  the  independence  of  the  Southern  Confed- 
eracy as  all  but  an  accomplished  fact,  he  remained  firm  in  the  conviction  that 
the  North  was  destined  to  triumph.  With  all  his  characteristic  recklessness 
and  impetuosity,  he  has  many  times  shown  a  cool  and  penetrating  judgment, 
hardly  surpassed  by  that  of  any  other  European  statesman.  Yet  the  undeniable 
fact  remains,  that  his  opinion  carries  with  it  comparatively  little  weight,  and  that 
no  party  recognizes  him  as  a  leader. 

Is  he  insincere  ?  Most  people  say  he  is.  They  say  that,  with  all  his  profes- 
sions of  democratic  faith,  he  delights  in  his  princely  rank  and  his  princely  rev- 
enues ;  that  he  is  selfish,  grasping,  luxurious,  arrogant  and  deceitful.  The  army 
despises  him  ;  the  populace  do  not  trust  him.  Now,  for  myself,  I  do  not  accept 
this  view  of  the  character  of  Prince  Napoleon.  I  think  he  is  a  sincere  Demo- 


84  PRINCE  NAPOLEON. 

crat.  a  genuine  lover  of  liberty  and  progress.  But  I  think,  at  the  same  time, 
that  he  is  cursed  with  some  of  the  vices  of  Alcibiades,  and  some  of  the  vices 
of  Mirabeau  ;  that  he  has  the  habitual  indolence  almost  of  a  Vendome.  with 
Vendome's  occasional  outbursts  of  sudden  energy ;  that  a  love  of  luxury, 
and  a  restlessness  of  character,  and  fretfulness  of  temper  stand  in  his  way, 
and  are  his  enemies.  I  doubt  whether  he  will  ever  play  a  great  historical  part, 
whether  he  ever  will  do  much  more  than  he  has  done.  His  character  wants 
that  backbone  of  earnest,  strong  simplicity  and  faith,  without  which  even  the 
most  brilliant  talents  can  hardly  achieve  political  greatness.  He  will  proba- 
bly rank  in  history  among  the  Might-Have-Beens.  Assuredly,  he  has  in  him 
the  capacity  to  play  a  great  part.  In  knowledge  and  culture,  he  is  far,  in- 
deed, superior  to  his  uncle,  Napoleon  I. ;  in  justice  of  political  conviction,  he 
is  a  long  way  in  advance  of  his  cousin,  Napoleon  III.  Taken  for  all  in  all, 
he  is  the  most  lavishly  gifted  of  the  race  of  the  Bonapartes — and  what  a  part 
in  the  cause  of  civilization  and  liberty  might  not  be  played  by  a  Bonaparte  en- 
dowed with  genius  and  culture,  and  faithful  to  high  and  true  convictions  !  But 
the  time  seems  going  by,  if  not  gone  by,  when  even  admirers  could  expect  to 
see  Prince  Napoleon  play  such  a  part.  Probably  the  disturbing,  distracting 
vein  of  unconquerable  levity  so  conspicuous  in  the  character  of  his  father,  is 
the  marplot  of  the  son's  career,  too.  After  .all,  Prince  Napoleon  is  perhaps 
more  of  an  Antony  than  a  Caesar — was  not  Antony,  too,  an  orator,  a  wit,  a  lover 
of  art  and  letters,  a  lover  of  luxury  and  free  companionship,  and  woman  ? 
Doubtless  Prince  Napoleon  will  emerge  again,  some  time  and  somehow,  from 
his  present  condition  of  comparative  obscurity.  Any  day,  any  crisis,  any  sud- 
den impulse  may  bring  him  up  to  the  front  again.  But  I  doubt  whether  the  dy- 
nasty of  the  Bonapartes,  the  cause  of  democratic  freedom,  the  destinies  of 
France,  will  be  influenced  much  for  good  or  evil,  by  this  man  of  rare  and  varied 
gifts — of  almost  measureless  possibilities — the  restless,  reckless,  eloquent,  bril- 
liant Imperial  Democrat  of  the  Palais  Royal,  and  Red  Republican  of  the  Em- 
pire— the  long  misunderstood  and  yet  scarcely  comprehended  Prince  Napoleon. 


THE  DUKE  OF  CAMBRIDGE. 


THERE  used  to  be  a  story  current  in  London,  which  I  dare  say  is  not  true, 
to  the  effect  that  her  gracious  Majesty  Queen  Victoria  once  demurred  to 
the  Prince  and  Princess  of  Wales  showing  themselves  too  freely  in  society,  and 
asked  them  angrily  whether  they  meant  to  make  themselves  "as  common  as  the 
Cambridges." 

Certainly  the  Duke  of  Cambridge  and  his  sister  the  Princess  Mary,  now 
Princess  of  Teck,  were  for  a  long  time,  if  not  exactly  "  common,"  if  not  precise- 
ly popular,  the  most  social,  the  most  easily  approached,  and  the  most  often  seen 
in  public  pageantry  of  all  members  of  the  royal  family.  The  Princess  Mary 
might  perhaps  fairly  be  called  popular.  The  people  liked  her  fine,  winsome 
face,  her  plump  and  buxom  form.  If  she  has  not  a  kindly,  warm,  and  generous 
heart,  then  surely  physiognomy  is  no  index  of  character.  But  the  Duke  of  Cam- 
bridge, although  very  commonly  seen  in  public,  and  ready  to  give  his  presence 
and  his  support  to  almost  any  philanthropic  meeting  and  institution  which  can 
claim  to  be  fashionable,  never  seems  to  have  attained  any  degree  of  popularity. 
Like  his  father,  who  enjoyed  the  repute  of  being  the  worst  after-dinner  speaker 
who  ever  opened  his  mouth,  the  Duke  of  Cambridge  is  to  be  found  acting  as 
chairman  of  some  public  banquet  once  a  week  on  an  average  during  the  London 
season.  He  is  president  or  patron  of  no  end  of  public  charities  and  other  insti- 
tutions. Yet  the  people  do  not  seem  to  care  anything  about  him,  or  even  to  like 
him.  His  appearance  is  not  in  his  favor.  He  is  handsome  in  a  certain  sense, 
but  he  is  heavy,  stolid,  sensual-looking,  and  even  gross  in  form  and  face.  He 
has  indeed  nearly  all  the  peculiarities  of  physiognomy  which  specially  belong  to 
the  most  typical  members  of  the  Guelph  family,  and  there  is,  moreover,  descite 
the  obesity  which  usually  suggests  careless  good-humor,  something  sinister  or 
secret  in  his  expression  not  pleasant  to  look  upon.  He  seems  to  be  a  man  of 
respectable  average  abilities.  He  is  not  a  remarkably  bad  speaker.  I  think 
when  he  addresses  the  House  of  Lords,  which  he  does  rarely,  or  a  public  meet- 
ing or  dinner-party,  which  he  does  often,  he  acquits  himself  rather  better  than 
the  ordinary  county  member  of  Parliament.  Judging  by  his  apparent  mental  ca- 
pacity and  his  style  as  a  speaker,  he  ought  to  be  rather  popular  than  otherwise 
in  England,  for  the  English  people  like  respectable  mediocrity  and  not  talent  in 
their  princes.  "  He  is  so  respectable  and  such  an  ass,"  says  Thackeray  speak- 
ing of  somebody,  "  that  I  positively  wonder  he  didn't  get  on  in  England."  The 
Duke  of  Cambridge  is  so  respectable  (in  intellectual  capacity)  and  so  dull  that  I 
positively  wonder  he  has  not  been  popular  in  England.  But  popular  he  never 
has  been.  No  such  clamorous  detestation  follows  him  as  used  to  pursue  the  late 
Duke  of  Cumberland,  subsequently  King  of  Hanover.  No  such  accusations 
have  been  made  against  him  as  were  familiarly  pressed  against  the  Duke  of 
York.  Even  against  the  living  Prince  of  Wales  there  are  charges  made  by  com- 
mon scandal  more  serious  than  any  that  are  usually  talked  of  in  regard  to  the 
Duke  of  Cambridge.  But  the  English  public  likes  the  Duke  as  little  as  it  could 
like  any  royal  personage.  England  has  lately  been  growing  very  jealous  of  the 
manner  in  which  valuable  appointments  are  heaped  on  members  of  the  Queen's 
family.  The  Duke  of  Cambridge  has  long  enjoyed  some  sinecure  places  of  lib- 
eral revenue,  and  he  holds  one  office  of  inestimable  influence,  for  which  he  has 


86  THE  DUKE  OF  CAMBRIDGE. 

never  proved  himself  qualified,  and  for  which  common  report  declares  him  to  be 
utterly  disqualified.  He  is  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  British  army  ;  and  that 
I  believe  to  be  his  grand  offence  in  the  eyes  of  the  British  public.  Many  of- 
fences incident  to  his  position  are  indeed  charged  upon  him.  It  is  said  that  he 
makes  an  unfair  use,  for  purposes  of  favoritism,  of  the  immense  patronage  which 
his  office  places  at  his  disposal.  Some  years  ago  scandal  used  to  charge  him 
with  advancing  men  out  of  the  same  motive  which  induced  the  Marquis  of 
Steyne  to  obtain  an  appointment  for  Colonel  Rawdon  Crawley.  The  private 
life  of  the  Duke  is  said  to  have  been  immoral,  and  unluckily  for  him  it  so  hap- 
pened that  some  of  his  closest  friends  and  favorites  became  now  and  then  in- 
volved in  scandals  of  which  the  law  courts  had  to  take  cognizance.  But  had 
none  of  these  things  been  so,  or  been  said,  I  think  the  Duke  of  Cambridge  would 
have  lacked  popularity  just  as  much  as  he  does.  The  English  people  are  si- 
lently angry  with  him,  mainly  because  he  is  an  anachronism — a  man  raised  to 
the  most  influential  public  appointment  the  sovereign  can  bestow,  for  no  other 
reason  than  because  he  is  a  member  of  the  royal  family.  The  Duke  of  Cam- 
bridge in  the  office  of  Commander-in-Chief  is  an  anachronism  at  the  head  of  an 
anomaly.  The  system  is  unfit  for  the  army  or  the  country  ;  the  man  is  incompe- 
tent to  manage  any  military  system,  good  or  bad.  As  the  question  of  army  re- 
organization, now  under  debate  in  England,  has  a  grand  political  importance, 
transcending  by  far  its  utmost  possible  military  import,  and  as  the  position  of 
the  Duke  of  Cambridge  is  one  of  the  peculiar  and  typical  anomalies  about  to  be 
abolished,  it  may  surely  interest  American  readers  if  I  occupy  a  few  pages  in  de- 
scribing the  man  and  the  system.  Altering  slightly  the  words  of  Bugeaud  to 
Louis  Philippe  in  1848,  this  reorganization  of  the  army  in  England  is  not  a  re- 
form, but  a  revolution.  It  strikes  out  the  keystone  from  the  arch  of  the  fabric  of 
English  aristocracy. 

The  Duke  of  Cambridge  is,  as  everybody  knows,  the  first  cousin  of  the 
Queen  of  England.  He  is  about  the  same  age  as  the  Queen.  When  both  were 
young  it  used  to  be  said  that  he  cherished  hopes  of  becoming  her  husband.  He  is 
now  himself  one  of  the  victims  of  the  odious  royal  marriage  act,  which  in  England 
acknowledges  as  valid  no  marriage  with  a  subject  contracted  by  a  member  of  the 
royal  family  without  the  consent  of  the  sovereign.  The  Duke  of  Cambridge,  it  is 
well  known,  is  privately  married  to  a  lady  of  respectable  position  and  of  character 
which  has  never  been  reproached,  but  whom,  nevertheless,  he  cannot  present  to 
the  world  as  his  wife  because  the  royal  consent  has  not  ratified  the  marriage. 
Many  readers  of  THE  GALAXY  may  perhaps  remember  that  only  four  or  five 
years  ago  there  was  some  little  commotion  created  in  England  by  the  report, 
never  contradicted,  that  a  princess  of  the  royal  house  had  set  her  heart  upon 
marrying  a  young  English  nobleman  who  loved  her,  and  that  the  Queen  utterly 
refused  to  give  her  consent.  Much  sympathy  was  felt  for  the  princess,  because, 
as  she  was  not  a  daughter  of  the  Queen  and  was  not  young  enough  to  be  reason- 
ably expected  to  acknowledge  the  control  of  any  relative,  this  rigorous  exercise 
of  a  merely  technical  power  seemed  particularly  unjust  and  odious.  It  will  be 
seen,  therefore,  that  the  objections  raised  against  the  Duke  and  his  position  in 
England  are  not  founded  on  the  belief  that  he  is  himself  as  an  individual  inor- 
dinately favored  by  the  sovereign  ;  but  on  the  obvious  fact  that  place  and  powet 
are  given  to  him  because  he  is  a  member  of  the  reigning  family.  The  Duke  of 
Cambridge  has  never  shown  the  slightest  military  talent,  the  faintest  capacity 
for  the  business  of  war.  In  his  only  campaign  he  proved  worse  than  useless,  and 
more  than  once  made  a  humiliating  exhibition,  not  of  cowardice,  but  of  utter  inca- 
pacity and  flaccid  nervelessness.  His  warmest  admirer  never  ventured  to  pretend 


THE  DUKE  OF  CAMBRIDGE.  87 

that  the  Duke  was  personally  the  best  man  to  take  the  place  of  Commander-in- 
Chief.  While  he  was  constantly  accused  by  rumor  and  sometimes  by  public  in- 
sinuation of  blundering,  of  obstinacy,  of  ignorance,  of  gross  favoritism,  no  de- 
fence ever  made  for  him,  no  eulogy  ever  pronounced  upon  him,  went  the  length 
Di  describing  him  as  a  well-qualified  head  of  the  military  organization.  His  up- 
holders and  panegyrists  were  content  with  pleading  virtually  that  he  was  by  no 
means  a  bad  sort  of  Commander-in-Chief ;  that  he  was  not  fairly  responsible  for 
this  or  that  blunder  or  malversation  ;  that  on  the  whole  there  might  have  been 
men  worse  fitted  than  he  for  the  place.  The  social  vindication  of  the  appoint- 
ment was  that  which  proved  very  naturally  its  worst  offence  in  the  eyes  of  the 
public — the  fact  that  the  sovereign  and  her  family  desired  that  the  place  should 
be  given  to  the  Duke  of  Cambridge,  and  that  the  ministers  then  in  power  either 
had  not  the  courage  or  did  not  think  it  worth  their  while  to  resist  the  royal 
inclination. 

The  Duke,  if  he  never  proved  himself  much  of  a  soldier,  had  at  least  oppor- 
tunity enough  to  learn  all  the  ordinary  business  of  his  profession.  He  actually 
is,  and  always  has  been,  a  professional  soldier — not  nominally  an  officer,  as  the 
late  Prince  Albert  was,  or  as  the  Prince  of  Wales  is,  or  as  the  Princess  Victoria 
(Crown  Princess  of  Prussia)  mav  be  said  for  that  matter  to  be,  the  lady  holding, 
I  believe,  an  appointment  as  colonel  of  some  regiment,  and  being  doubtless  just 
as  well  acquainted  with  her  regimental  duties  as  her  fat  and  heavy  brother. 
The  Duke  of  Cambridge  was  made  a  colonel  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  and  he  did 
the  ordinary  barrack  and  garrison  duties  of  his  place.  He  used  when  young  to 
be  rather  popular  in  garrison  towns.  In  Dublin,  for  example,  I  think  Prince 
George  of  Cambridge,  as  he  was  then  called,  was  followed  with  glances  of  admi- 
ration by  many  hundred  pairs  of  bright  eyes.  On  the  death  of  his  father  (whose 
after-dinner  eloquence  used  to  afford  "  Punch  "  a  constant  subject  for  mirth) 
Prince  George  became  in  1850  Duke  of  Cambridge.  He  holds  some  appoint- 
ments which  I  presume  are  sinecures  to  him  ;  among  the  rest  he  is  keeper  of 
some  of  the  royal  parks  (I  don't  know  the  precise  title  of  his  office),  and  the  name 
of  "George"  may  be  seen  appended  to  edicts  inscribed  on  various  placards  on 
the  trees  and  gates  near  Buckingham  Palace.  Nothing  in  particular  was  known 
about  him  as  a  soldier  until  the  Crimean  war.  Indeed,  up  to  that  time  there  had 
been  for  many  years  as  little  chance  for  an  English  officer  to  prove  his  capacity 
as  there  was  for  a  West  Point  man  to  show  what  he  was  worth  in  the  period  be- 
tween the  Mexican  war  and  the  attack  on  Fort  Sumter.  When  the  Crimean 
war  broke  out  the  Duke  was  appointed  to  the  command  of  the  first  division  of 
the  army  sent  against  the  Russians.  I  believe  it  is  beyond  all  doubt  that  he 
proved  himself  unfit  for  the  business  of  war.  He  "  lost  his  head,"  people  say  ; 
he  could  not  stand  the  sights  and  sounds  of  the  battle-field.  It  required  on 
one  occasion — at  Inkerman,  I  believe — the  prompt  and  sharp  interference  of  the 
late  Lord  Clyde,  then  Sir  Colin  Campbell,  to  prevent  his  Royal  Highness  from 
making  a  sad  mess  of  his  command.  It  is  not  likely  that  he  wanted  personal 
courage — few  princes  do  ;  but  his  nerves  gave  way,  and  as  he  could  be  of  no  fur- 
ther use  to  anybody  he  was  induced  to  return  home.  France  and  ffngland  each 
sent  a  fat  prince,  cousin  of  the  reigning  sovereign,  to  the  Crimean  war,  and  each 
prince  rather  suddenly  came  home  again  with  the  invidious  whispers  of  the  ma- 
lign unpleasantly  criticising  his  retreat  from  the  field.  After  the  Duke's  return 
the  corporation  of  Liverpool  gave  him  (why,  no  man  could  well  say)  a  grand  tri- 
umphal entry,  and  I  remember  that  an  irreverent  and  cynical  member  of  one  of 
the  local  boards  suggested  that  among  the  devices  exhibited  in  honor  of  the  il- 
lustrious visitor,  a  white  feather  would  be  an  appropriate  emblem.  There  the 


88  THE  DUKE  OF  CAMBRIDGE. 

Duke's  active  military  career  began  and  ended.  He  had  not  distinguished  him- 
self. Perhaps  he  had  not  disgraced  himself;  perhaps  it  was  really  only  ill- 
health  which  prevented  him  from  proving  himself  as  genuine  a  warrior  as  his 
relative,  the  Crown  Prince  of  Prussia.  But  the  English  people  only  saw  that 
the  Duke  went  out  to  the  war  and  very  quickly  came  back  again.  Julius  Caesar 
or  the  First  Napoleon  or  General  Sherman  might  have  had  to  do  the  same  tiling 
under  the  same  circumstances  ;  but  then  these  more  lucky  soldiers  did  not  have 
to  do  it,  and  therefore  were  able  to  prove  their  military  capacity.  One  thing 
very  certain  is,  that  without  such  good  fortune  and  such  proof  of  capacity  neither 
Caesar,  Napoleon,  nor  Sherman  would  ever  have  been  made  commander-in- 
chief,  and  therein  again  they  were  unlike  the  Duke  of  Cambridge.  For  it  was 
not  long  after  the  Duke's  return  home  that  on  the  death  or  resignation  (I  don't 
now  quite  remember  which)  of  Viscount  Hardinge,  our  heavy  "George"  was 
made  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  British  army.  I  venture  to  think  that,  taking 
all  the  conditions  of  the  time  and  the  appointment  into  consideration,  no  more 
unreasonable,  no  more  unjustifiable  instance  of  military  promotion  was  ever  seen 
in  England. 

For  observe,  that  the  worst  thing  about  the  appointment  of  the  Duke  of 
Cambridge  is  not  that  an  incompetent  person  obtains  by  virtue  of  his  rank  the 
highest  military  position  in  the  State.  If  this  were  all,  there  might  be  just  the 
same  thing  said  of  almost  every  other  European  country — indeed,  of  almost  every 
other  country.  The  King  of  Prussia  was  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  armies  of 
North  Germany,  but  no  one  supposed  that  he  was  really  competent  to  discharge 
all  the  duties  of  such  a  position.  Abraham  Lincoln  was  Commander-in-Chief  of 
the  Federal  army,  by  virtue  of  his  office  of  President ;  but  no  one  supposed  that 
his  military  knowledge  and  capacity  would  ever  have  recommended  him  to  such 
a  post.  The  appointment  in  each  case  was  only  nominal,  and  as  a  matter  ot 
political  convenience  and  propriety.  It  did  not  seem  wise  or  even  safe  that  the 
supreme  military  authority  should  be  formally  intrusted  to  any  one  but  the  rukr 
or  the  President.  It  was  thoroughly  understood  that  the  duties  of  the  office 
were  discharged  by  some  professional  expert,  for  whose  work  the  King  or  the 
President  was  responsible  to  the  nation.  But  the  office  of  Commander-in-Chief 
of  the  English  army  is  something  quite  different  from  this.  It  is  understood  to 
be  a  genuine  office,  the  occupant  actually  doing  the  work  and  having  the  au- 
thority. In  the  lifetime  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  the  country  had  the  services 
of  the  very  best  Commander-in-Chief  England  could  have  selected.  The  sound 
and  wise  principle  which  dictated  that  appointment  is  really  the  principle  on 
which  the  office  is  based  in  England.  The  Commander-in-Chief  is  not  regarded, 
as  on  the  Continent,  in  the  light  of  an  ornamental  president  of  a  great  bureau 
whose  duties  are  done  by  others,  but  as  the  most  efficient  military  officer,  the 
man  best  qualified  to  do  the  work.  Marlborough  was  Commander-in-Chief,  and  so 
was  Schomberg,  and  so  was  General  Seymour  Conway.  When  in  1828  the 
Duke  of  Wellington  became  Prime  Minister,  and  therefore  resigned  the  com- 
mand of  the  army.  Lord  Hill  was  placed  at  the  head  of  military  affairs.  The 
Duke  of  Wellington  resumed  the  command  in  1842  and  held  it  to  his  death, 
when  it  was  given  to  Viscount  Hardinge,  a  capable  man.  The  title  of  the  office 
was  not,  I  believe,  actually  "  Commander-in-Chief,"  but  "  General  Commanding- 
in-Chief."  It  was,  if  I  remember  rightly,  owing  to  the  disasters  arising  out  of 
military  mismanagement  in  the  Crimea,  that  the  changes  were  made  which 
created  a  distinct  Secretary  of  War  and  gave  to  the  office  of  Commander-in- 
Chief  its  present  title.  Therefore  it  will  be  seen  that  the  intrusting  the 
command  of  the  army  to  the  Duke  of  Cambridge  is  not  even  justifiable  on  the 


THE  DUKE  OF  CAMBRIDGE.  89 

ground  that  it  follows  an  old  established  custom.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  a-n  in- 
novation, and  one  which  illustrates  the  worst  possible  principle.  There  is  noth- 
ing to  be  said  for  it.  No  necessity  justified  or  even  excused  it.  When  Vis- 
count Hardinge  died,  if  the  principle  adopted  in  his  case — that  of  appointing  the 
best  man  to  the  place — had  been  still  in  favor,  there  were  many  military  gen- 
erals in  England,  any  one  of  whom  would  have  filled  the  office  with  efficiency 
and  credit.  But  the  superstition  of  rank  prevailed.  The  Duke  of  Wellington 
is  believed  to  have  once  recommended  that  on  his  death  Prince  Albert,  the 
Queen's  husband,  should  be  created  Commander-in-Chief.  Ridiculous  as  the 
suggestion  may  seem,  it  would  probably  have  been  a  far  better  arrangement  than 
that  which  was  more  recently  adopted.  Prince  Albert  could  hardly  have  been 
called  a  professional  soldier  at  all ;  and  this  would  have  been  greatly  in  his  favor. 
For  he  would  have  filled  the  place  merely  as  the  King  of  Prussia  does  ;  he 
would  have  intrusted  the  actual  duties  to  some  qualified  man,  and  being  endowed 
with  remarkable  judgment,  temper,  and  discretion,  he  would  doubtless  have 
found  the  right  man  for  "the  work.  But  the  Duke  of  Cambridge,  as  a  profes- 
sional soldier,  although  a  very  indifferent  one,  is  expected  to  perform  and  does 
perform  the  duties  of  his  office,  after  his  own  fashion.  He  is  too  high  in  rank  to 
be  openly  rebuked,  contradicted,  or  called  to  account ;  he  is  not  high  enough  to 
be  accepted  as  a  mere  official  ornament  or  figurehead.  He  is  too  much  of  a  pro- 
fessional general  to  become  willingly  the  pupil  and  instrument  of  a  more  skilled 
subordinate  ;  too  little  of  a  professional  general  to  render  his  authority  of  any 
real  value,  or  to  be  properly  qualified  for  any  high  military  position.  So  the 
Duke  of  Cambridge  did  actually  direct  the  affairs  of  the  army,  interfered  in 
everything,  was  supreme  in  everything,  and  I  think  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
mismanaged  everything.  He  stood  in  the  way  of  all  useful  reforms  ;  he  shet 
tered  old  abuses  ;  he  was  as  dictatorial  as  though  he  had  the  military  genius 
of  a  Wellington  or  a  Von  Moltke  ;  he  was  as  independent  of  public  opinion  as 
the  Mikado  of  Japan.  The  kind  of  mistakes  which  were  made  and  abuses  which 
were  committed  under  his  administration  were  not  such  as  to  attract  much  ot 
the  attention  or  interest  of  the  newspapers.  In  England  the  press,  moreover,  is 
not  supposed  to  be  at  liberty  to  criticise  princes.  Of  late  some  little  efforts 
at  daring  innovation  are  made  in  this  direction  ;  but  as  a  rule,  unless  a  prince 
does  something  very  wrong  indeed,  he  is  secure  from  any  censure  or  even  criti- 
cism on  the  part  of  the  newspapers.  There  was,  besides,  one  great  practical 
difficulty  in  the  way  of  any  one  inclined  to  criticise  the  military  administration 
of  the  Duke  of  Cambridge.  The  War  Department  in  England  had  grown  to  be  a 
kind  of  anomalous  two-headed  institution.  There  is  a  Secretary  of  War,  who 
sits  in  the  House  of  Lords  or  the  House  of  Commons,  as  the  case  may  be,  and 
whom  every  one  can  challenge,  criticise,  and  censure  as  he  pleases.  There 
is  the  Commander-in-Chief.  Which  of  these  two  functionaries  is  the  superior  ? 
The  theory  of  course  is  that  the  Secretary  of  War  is  supreme ;  that  he  is  re- 
sponsible to  Parliament,  and  that  every  official  in  the  department  is  responsible 
to  him.  But  everybody  in  England  knows  that  this  is  not  the  actual  case. 
There  stands  in  Pall  Mall,  not  far  from  the  residence  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  a 
plain  business-like  structure,  with  a  statue  of  the  late  Lord  Herbert  of  Lea  (the 
Sidney  Herbert  of  Crimean  days)  in  front  of  it ;  and  this  is  the  War  Office,  where 
the  Secretary  of  War  is  in  power.  But  there  is  in  Whitehall  another  building 
far  better  known  to  Londoners  and  strangers  alike  ;  an  old-fashioned,  unlovely, 
shabby-looking  sort  of  barrack,  with  a  clock  in  its  shapeless  cupola  and  two 
small  arches  in  its  front,  in  each  of  which  enclosures  sits  all  day  a  gigantic 
horseman  in  steel  cuirass  and  high  jack-boots.  The  country  visitor  comes  here 


90  THE  DUKE  OF  CAMBRIDGE. 

to  wonder  at  the  size  and  the  accoutrements  of  the  splendid  soldiers  ;  the 
nursery-maid  loves  the  spot,  and  gazes  with  open  mouth  and  sparkling  eyes  at 
the  athletic  cavaliers,  and  too  often,  like  Hylas  sent  with  his  urn  to  the  foun- 
tain, " proposito florem pratnlit  officio"  prefers  looking  at  the  gorgeous  military 
carnation  blazing  before  her  to  the  duty  of  watching  her  infantile  charge  in  the 
•perambulator.  This  building  is  the  famous  "  Horse  Guards,"  where  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief  is  enthroned.  I  suppose  the  theory  of  the  thing  was,  that  while 
the  army  system  was  to  be  shaped  out  and  directed  in  the  War  Office,  the  actual 
details  of  practical  administration  were  to  be  managed  at  the  Horse  Guards. 
But  of  late  years  the  relations  of  the  two  departments  appear  to  have  got  into  an 
almost  inextricable  and  hopeless  muddle,  so  that  no  one  can  pretend  to  say 
where  the  responsibility  of  the  War  Office  ends  or  the  authority  of  the  Horse 
Guards  begins.  The  Duke  of  Cambridge,  it  is  said,  habitually  acts  upon  his  own 
authority  and  ignores  the  War  Office  altogether.  Things  are  done  by  him  of 
which  the  Secretary  for  War  knows  nothing  until  they  are  done.  The  late 
Sidney  Herbert,  a  man  devoted  to  the  duties  of  the  War  Department,  over  which 
he  presided  for  some  years,  once  emphatically  refused  during  a  debate  in  the 
House  of  Commons  to  evade  the  responsibility  of  some  step  taken  at  the  Horse 
Guards,  by  pleading  that  it  was  made  without  the  knowledge  of  the  War  Office. 
He  declared  that  he  considered  himself,  as  War  Secretary,  responsible  to  Parlia- 
ment for  everything  done  in  any  office  of  the  War  Department.  But  it  was  quite 
evident  from  the  tone  of  his  speech  that  the  thing  had  been  done  without  his 
knowledge  or  consent,  and  that  if  anybody  but  the  Queen's  cousin  had  done  it  there 
would  have  been  a  "row  in  the  building."  Now  Sidney  Herbert  was  an  aris- 
tocrat of  high  rank,  of  splendid  fortune,  of  unsurpassed  social  dignity  and  influ- 
ence, of  great  political  talents  and  reputatian.  If  he  then  could  not  attempt  to 
control  and  rebuke  the  Queen's  cousin,  how  could  such  an  attempt  be  expected 
from  a  man  like  Mr.  Cardwell,  the  present  War  Secretary  ?  Mr.  Cardwell  is  a 
dull,  steady-going,  respectable  man,  who  has  no  pretension  to  anything  like  the 
rank,  social  influence,  or  even  popularity  of  Sidney  Herbert.  In  fact,  the  War 
Secretaries  stand  sometimes  in  much  the  same  relation  toward  the  Duke  of 
Cambridge  that  a  New  York  judge  occasionally  holds  toward  one  of  the  great 
leaders  of  the  bar  who  pleads  before  him  and  is  formally  supposed  to  acknowl- 
edge his  superior  authority.  The  person  holding  the  position  nominally  superior 
feels  himself  in  reality  quite  "  over-crowed,"  to  use  a  Spenserian  expression,  by 
the  influence,  importance,  and  dignity  of  the  other.  Let  any  stranger  in  London 
who  happens  to  be  in  the  gallery  of  the  House  of  Lords,  observe  the  astonishing 
deference  with  which  even  a  pure-blooded  marquis  or  earl  of  antique  title  will 
receive  the  greeting  of  the  Duke  of  Cambridge  ;  and  then  saj  what  chance  there 
is  of  a  War  Secretary,  who  probably  belongs  to  the  middle  or  manufacturing 
classes,  venturing  to  dictate  to  or  rebuke  so  tremendous  a  magnifico.  Lately  an 
audacious  critic  of  the  Duke  has  started  up  in  the  person  of  a  clever,  vivacious 
young  member  of  Parliament,  George  Otto  Trevelyan,  son  of  one  of  the  ablest 
Indian  administrators  and  nephew  of  Lord  Macaulay.  Trevelyan  once  held,  I 
think,  some  subordinate  place  in  the  War  Department,  and  he  has  lately  been 
horrifying  the  conservatism  and  veneration  of  English  society  by  boldly  making 
speeches  in  which  he  attacks  the  Queen's  cousin,  declares  that  the  latter  is  an 
injury  and  nuisance  to  the  army  system,  that  he  stands  in  the  way  of  all  im- 
provement, and  that  he  ought  to  be  abolished.  But  although  most  people  dc 
profoundly  and  potently  believe  what  this  saucy  Trevelyan  says,  yet  his  words 
find  little  echo  in  public  debate,  and  his  direct  motions  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons have  been  unsuccessful.  The  Duke,  I  perceive,  has  lately,  however,  de- 


THE  DUKE  OF  CAMBRIDGE.  91 

scended  so  far  from  his  position  of  supreme  dignity  as  to  defend  himself  in  a 
public  speech,  and  to  claim  the  merit  of  having  always  been  a  progressive  and 
indeed  rather  daring  army  reformer.  But  I  do  not  believe  the  English  Govern- 
ment or  Parliament  would  ever  have  ventured  to  take  one  step  to  lessen  the 
Duke  of  Cambridge's  power  of  doing  harm  to  the  military  service,  were  it  not 
for  the  pressure  of  events  with  which  England  had  nothing  directly  to  do,  and  which 
nevertheless  have  proved  too  strong  for  the  resistance  even  of  princes  and  of 
vested  interests.  The  practical  dethronement  of  the  Duke  of  Cambridge  I  hold 
to  be  as  certain  as  any  mortal  event  still  in  the  future  can  well  be  declared.  The 
anomaly,  the  inconvenience,  the  degradation  which  English  Governments  and 
Parliaments  would  have  endured  forever  if  left  to  themselves,  may  be  regarded 
as  destined  to  be  swept  away  by  the  same  flood  which  overwhelmed  the  military 
organization  of  France,  and  washed  the  Bonapartes  off  the  throne  of  the  Tuile- 
ries.  The  Duke  of  Cambridge  too  had  to  surrender  at  Sedan. 

For  with  the  overwhelming  successes  of  Prussia  and  the  unparalleled  collapse 
of  France,  there  arose  In  England  so  loud  and  general  a  cry  for  the  reorganiza- 
tion of  the  decaying  old  army  system  that  no  Government  could  possibly  attempt 
to  disregard  it.  Mr.  Gladstone's  Cabinet  had  the  sense  and  spirit  to  see  that  no 
middle  course  of  reform  would  be  worth  anything.  In  media  tutissimus  ibis 
would  never  apply  to  this  case.  Any  reform  must  count  on  the  obstinate  oppo- 
sition of  vested  interests — a  tremendous  power  in  English  affairs  ;  and  the  only 
way  to  bear  down  that  opposition  would  be  by  introducing  a  reform  so  thorough 
and  grand  as  to  carry  with  it  the  enthusiasm  of  popular  support.  Therefore  the 
Government  have  undertaken  a  new  work  of  revolution,  certainly  not  less  bold 
than  that  which  overthrew  the  Irish  Church,  and  destined  perhaps  to  have  a 
still  more  decisive  influence  on  the  political  organization  of  English  society. 
One  of  the  many  changes  this  measure  will  introduce — and  it  is  certain  to  be 
carried,  first  or  last — will  be  the  extinction  of  the  anomaly  now  represented  by 
the  position  of  the  Duke  of  Cambridge.  I  shall  not  inflict  any  of  the  details  of 
the  measure  upon  my  readers  in  THE  GALAXY,  and  shall  even  give  but  slight 
attention  to  such  of  its  main  features  as  are  of  purely  military  character  and  im- 
port. But  I  shall  endeavor  briefly  to  make  it  clear  that  some  of  the  changes  it 
proposes  to  introduce  will  have  a  profound  influence  on  the  political  and  social 
condition  of  England,  and  are  in  fact  steps  in  that  great  English  revolution 
which  is  steadily  marching  on  under  our  very  eyes. 

First  comes  the  abolition  of  the  purchase  system  as  regards  the  commissions 
held  by  military  officers.  Except  in  certain  regiments,  and  certain  branches  of 
the  service  outside  England  itself,  the  rule  is  that  an  officer  obtains  his  commis- 
sion by  purchase.  Promotion  can  be  bought  in  the  same  way.  A  commission 
is  a  vested  interest.  The  owner  has  paid  so  much  for  it,  and  expects  to  sell  it 
for  an  equal  sum.  The  regulation  price  recognized  by  law  and  the  Horse 
Guards  is  by  no  means  the  actual  price  of  the  article.  It  is  worth  ever  so  much 
more  to  the  holder,  and  he  must  of  course  have  its  real,  not  its  regulation  value. 
The  pay  in  the  English  army  is,  for  the  officers,  ridiculously  small.  The  habits 
of  the  army,  among  officers,  are  ridiculously  expensive.  An  officer  is  not  ex- 
pected to  live  upon  his  pay.  Whether  expected  to  do  so  or  not,  he  could  hardly 
accomplish  the  feat  under  any  conditions  ;  under  the  common  conditions  of  an 
officers'  mess-room  the  thing  would  be  utterly  impossible.  Now  let  any  reader 
ask  himself  what  becomes  of  a  department  of  the  public  service  where  you  ob- 
tain admission  by  payment,  and  where  when  admitted  you  receive  practically  no 
remuneration  ?  Of  course  it  becomes  a  mere  club  and  association  for  the 
wealthy  and  aristocratic  ;  a  brotherhood  into  which  admission  is  sought  for  the 


93  THE  DUKE  OF  CAMBRIDGE. 

sake  of  social  distinction.  Every  man  of  rank  in  England  will,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  have  one  of  his  sons  in  the  army.  It  is  the  right  sort  of  thing  to  do,  like 
hunting  or  going  into  the  House  of  Commons.  Then,  on  the  other  hand,  every 
person  who  has  made  money  sends  one  of  his  sons  into  the  army,  because  there- 
by he  acquires  a  stamp  of  gentility.  Poverty  and  merit  have  no  chance  and  no 
business  there.  It  certainly  is  not  true,  as  is  commonly  believed  here,  that 
promotion  from  the  ranks  never  takes  place  ;  but  speaking  of  the  system  as  a 
whole,  one  may  fairly  say  that  promotion  from  the  ranks  is  opposed  to  the  ordi- 
nary regulation,  and  occurs  so  rarely  that  it  need  hardly  be  taken  into  our  con- 
sideration here.  Therefore  the  English  army  became  an  essentially  aristocratic 
service.  To  be  an  officer  was  the  right  of  the  aristocratic,  the  luxury,  ambition, 
and  ornament  of  the  wealthy.  One  is  almost  afraid  now  to  venture  on  saying 
anything  in  praise  of  the  French  military  system  ;  but  it  had,  if  I  do  not  greatly 
mistake,  one  regulation  among  others  which  honorably  distinguished  it  from  the 
English.  I  believe  it  was  not  permitted  to  a  wealthy  officer  to  distinguish  him- 
self from  his  fellows  while  in  barracks  by  extravagance  of  expenditure.  He  had 
to  live  as  the  others  lived.  But  the  English  system  allowed  full  scope  to 
wealth,  and  the  result  was  that  certain  regiments  prided  themselves  on  luxury 
and  ostentation,  and  a  poor  man,  or  even  a  man  of  moderate  means,  could  not 
live  in  them.  Add  to  all  this  that  while  the  expenses  were  great  and  the  pay 
next  to  nothing,  there  were  certain  valuable  prizes,  sinecures,  and  monopolies  to 
be  had  in  the  army,  which  favoritism  and  family  influence  could  procure,  and 
which  therefore  rendered  it  additionally  desirable  that  the  control  of  the  military 
organization  should  be  retained  in  the  hands  of  the  aristocracy.  John  Bright 
described  the  military  and  diplomatic  services  of  England  as  "a  gigantic  system 
of  outdoor  relief  for  the  broken-down  members  of  the  British  aristocracy." 
This  was  especially  true  of  the  military  service,  which  had  a  large  number  of 
rich  and  pleasant  prizes  to  be  awarded  at  the  uncontrolled  discretion  of  the  au- 
thorities. It  might  be  fairly  said  that  every  aristocratic  family  had  at  least  one 
scion  in  the  army.  Every  aristocratic  family  had  likewise  one  in  the  House  of 
Commons  ;  sometimes  two,  or  three,  or  four  sons  and  nephews.  The  mere  nu- 
merical strength  of  the  military  officers  who  had  seats  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons was  enough  to  hold  up  a  tremendous  barrier  in  the  way  of  army  reform  or 
political  reform.  It  was  as  clear  as  light  that  a  popular  Parliament  would 
among  its  very  first  works  of  reformation  proceed  to  throw  open  the  army  to  the 
competition  of  merit,  independently  of  either  aristocratic  rank  or  moneyed  influ- 
ence. So  the  military  men  in  the  House  of  Commons  were,  with  some  few  and 
remarkable  exceptions,  steady  Tories  and  firm  opponents  of  all  reform  either  in 
the  army  or  the  political  system.  Year  after  year  did  gallant  old  De  Lacy  Evans 
bring  forward  his  motion  for  the  abolition  of  the  purchase  system  in  vain.  He 
was  always  met  by  the  supposed  practical  authority  of  the  great  bulk  of  the  mil 
itary  members  and  by  the  dead  weight  of  aristocratic  influence  and  vested  in- 
terests. The  army,  as  then  organized,  was  at  once  the  fortress  and  the  trophy 
of  the  English  aristocracy.  At  last  the  effort  at  reform  seemed  to  be  given  up 
altogether.  Though  humane  reformers  did  at  last  succeed  in  getting  rid  of  the 
detestable  system  of  flogging  in  the  army,  the  practice  of  trafficking  in  commis- 
sions seemed  safer  than  ever.  One  difficulty  in  the  way  of  its  abolition  was 
always  pressed  with  special  emphasis  by  persons  who  otherwise  were  prodigal 
enough  of  the  public  money — the  cost  such  a  measure  would  entail  on  the  people 
of  England.  It  would  be  impossible,  of  course,  to  abolish  such  a  system  with- 
out compensating  those  who  had  paid  money  for  the  commissions  which  thence- 
forward could  be  sold  no  more.  The  amount  of  money  required  for  such  com- 


THE  DUKE  OF  CAMBRIDGE.  93 

pensation  would  be  some  forty  millions  of  dollars.  Moreover,  when  commis- 
sions are  given  away  among  all  classes  according  to  merit,  the  pay  of  officers 
will  have  to  be  raised.  It  would  indeed  be  a  cruel  mockery  to  give  poor  Claude 
Melnotte  an  officer's  rank  if  he  does  not  at  the  same  time  get  pay  enough  to 
enable  him  to  live.  Therefore  for  once  the  English  aristocrats  and  Tories  were 
heard  to  raise  their  voices  in  favor  of  the  saving  of  public  money  ;  but  they  were 
only  assuming  the  attitude  of  economists  for  the  sake  of  upholding  their  own 
privileges  and  defending  their  vested  interests.  There  will,  of  course,  be  a  fierce 
and  long  fight  made  even  still  against  the  change,  but  the  change,  I  take  it,  will 
be  accomplished.  The  English  army  will  cease  to  be  an  army  officered  exclu- 
sively from  among  the  ranks  of  the  aristocracy  and  the  wealthy.  Our  time  has 
seen  no  step  attempted  in  English  political  affairs  more  distinctly  democratic 
than  this.  I  can  hardly  realize  to  my  mind  what  England  will  be  like  when  com- 
missions and  promotions  in  its  military  service  are  the  recognized  prizes  of  merit 
in  whatever  rank  of  life,  and  are  won  by  open  competition. 

Next,  the  English  Government,  approaching  rather  delicately  the  difficulty 
about  the  Commander-in-Chief,  propose  to  unite   the  two  departments  of  the 
service  under  one  roof.      The  Commander-in-Chief  and  his  staff  and  offices 
will  be  transferred  from  the  Horse  Guards  in  Whitehall  to  the  War  Office  in 
Pall  Mall,  and  placed  more  directly  under  the  control  of  the  Secretary  of  War. 
This   change    must   inevitably   bring   about   the    end   at   which    it   aims  —  the 
abolition  of  the  embarrassing  and  injurious  dualism  of  system  now  prevail- 
ing.    It  must  indeed  reduce  the   General    commanding-in-chief  to  his  proper 
position  as  the  executive  officer   of  the    War    Secretary,  who   is   himself  the 
servant  of  Parliament.     Such  a  position  would  entail  no  restriction  whatever 
on  the  military  capacity  or  genius  of  the  Commander-in-Chief  were  he  another 
Maryborough  ;  but  it  would  make  him  responsible  to  somebody  who  is  himself 
responsible  to  the  House  of  Commons.     I   think  it  may  be  taken  for  granted 
that  this  will  come  to  mean,  sooner  or  later,  the  shelving  of  the  Duke  of  Cam- 
bridge.    It  may  be  hoped  that  he  will  not  consider  it  consistent  with  his  dignity 
as  a  member  of  the  royal  family  to  remain  in  a  position  thus  made  virtually  that 
of  a  subordinate.     Some  other  place  perhaps  will  be  found  for  the  cousin  of  the 
Queen.     I  have  already  heard  some  talk  about  the  possibility  and  propriety  of 
sending  his  Royal  Highness  as  Lord  Lieutenant  to  govern  Ireland.     Why  not? 
There  is  a  vile  corpus  convenient  and  ready  to  hand  for  any  experiment.     It 
would  be  quite  in  keeping  with  all  the  traditions  of  English  rule,  with  the  prac- 
tice which  was  illustrated  only  a  few  years  ago  when  the  noisy  and  brainless 
scamp  Sir  Robert  Peel,  whom  "Punch"  christened  "The  Mountebank  Mem- 
ber," was  made  Irish  Secretary,  if  the  Duke  of  Cambridge  were  allowed  to  soothe 
his  offended  dignity  by  practising  his  skilful  hand  on  the  government  of  Ireland. 
Finally,  the  Government  propose  to  introduce  measures  calculated  to  weld 
together  as  far  as  possible  the  regular  and   irregular  forces  of  the  country. 
There  are  in  England  three  classes  of  soldiery — the  regular  army,  the  militia, 
and  the  volunteers.     The  militia  constitute  a  force  as  nearly  as  possible  corre- 
sponding with  that  in  whose  companionship  Sir  John  Falstaff  declined  to  march 
through   Coventry.     Bombastes  Furioso  or  the  Grande  Duchesse  hardly  ever 
marshalled  such  a  body  of  men  as  may  be  seen  when  a  British  militia  regiment 
is  turned  out  for  exercise.     Awkward  country  bumpkins  and  beer-swilling  row- 
dies of  the  poacher  class  make  up  the  bulk  of  the  privates.     They  are  a  terror  to 
any  small  town  where  they  may  happen  to  be  exercising,  and  where  not  infre- 
quently they  finish  up  a  day's  drill  by  a  general  smashing  of  windows,  sacking 
of  shops,  and  plundering  of  inhabitants.     The  volunteers  are  a  force  composed 


94  THE  DUKE  OF  CAMBRIDGE. 

of  a  much  better  class  of  men,  and  are  capable,  I  think,  of  great  military  effi- 
ciency and  service  if  properly  organized.  Of  late  the  volunteer  force  has,  I  be- 
lieve, been  growing  somewhat  demoralized.  The  Government  never  gave  it 
very  cordial  encouragement,  its  position  was  hardly  defined,  and  the  national  en- 
thusiasm out  of  which  it  sprang  naturally  began  to  languish.  We  in  England 
have  always  owed  our  volunteer  force  to  some  sudden  menace  or  dread  of 
French  invasion.  It  was  so  in  the  time  of  William  Pitt.  We  all  remember  the 
famous  sarcasm  with  which  that  statesman  replied  to  the  request  of  some  vol- 
unteer regiments  not  to  be  sent  out  on  foreign  service.  Pitt  gravely  assured 
them  that  they  never,  should  be  sent  out  of  the  country  unless  in  case  of  Eng- 
land's invasion.  Erskine  was  a  volunteer,  and  I  think  it  was  as  an  officer  of 
volunteers  that  Gibbon  said  he  acquired  a  practical  knowledge  of  military  af- 
fairs, which  proved  useful  to  him  in  describing  the  decline  and  fall  of  the  Roman 
empire.  Our  present  volunteer  service  originated  in  the  last  of  the  "three 
panics"  described  by  Cobden — the  fear  of  invasion  by  Louis  Napoleon,  the 
panic  which  Tennyson  endeavored  to  foment  by  his  weak  and  foolish  "  Form, 
form!  Riflemen,  form!"  The  volunteer  force,  however,  continued  to  grow 
stronger  and  stronger  long  after  the  alarm  had  died  away ;  and  even  though  re- 
cently the  progress  of  improvement  seems  to  have  been  somewhat  checked,  and 
the  volunteer  body  to  have  become  lax  in  its  organization,  it  appears  to  me  that 
in  its  intelligence,  its  earnestness,  and  its  physical  capacity  there  exists  the  ma- 
terial out  of  which  might  be  moulded  a  very  valuable  arm  of  the  military  ser- 
vice. The  War  Minister  now  proposes  to  take  steps  which  shall  render  the 
militia  a  decent  body,  commanded  by  really  qualified  and  responsible  officers, 
which  shall  give  better  officers  to  the  volunteers,  and  place  these  latter  under 
more  effective  discipline,  and  which  shall  bring  militia  and  volunteers  into  closer 
relationship  with  the  regular  army.  How  far  these  objects  may  be  attained  by  the 
measures  now  under  consideration  I  do  not  pretend  to  judge  ;  but  I  cannot  regard 
the  present  War  Minister  as  a  man  highly  qualified  for  the  place  he  holds.  Mr. 
Cardwell  is  an  admirable  clerk — patient,  plodding,  untiring  ;  but  I  doubt  whether 
he  has  any  of  the  higher  qualities  of  an  administrator  or  much  force  of  character. 
He  is  perhaps  the  very  dullest  speaker  holding  a  marked  position  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  He  is  fluent,  not  as  Gladstone  and  a  river  are  fluent,  but  as  the  sand 
in  an  hour-glass  is  fluent.  That  sand  itself  is  not  more  dull,  colorless,  monoto- 
nous, and  dry,  than  is  the  eloquence  of  the  War  Minister.  Mr.  Cardwell  is  not 
always  fortunate  in  his  military  prophecies.  On  the  memorable  night  in  last 
July  when  the  news  reached  London  that  France  had  declared  war  against 
Prussia,  Mr.  Cardwell  affirmed  that  that  meant  the  occupation  of  Berlin  by  the 
French  within  a  month.  It  must  be  remembered,  however,  as  an  excuse  for  the 
War  Minister's  unlucky  prediction,  that  an  English  military  commission  sent  to 
examine  the  two  systems  had  shortly  before  reported  wholly  in  favor  of  the 
French  army  organization  and  dead  against  that  of  Prussia. 

The  English  Government,  wisely,  I  think,  decline  to  attempt  the  introduction 
of  any  measure  for  general  and  compulsory  service,  except  as  a  last  resource  in 
desperate  exigencies.  The  England  of  the  future  is  not  likely,  I  trust,  to  em- 
broil herself  much  in  Continental  quarrels  ;  and  she  may  be  quite  expected  to 
hold  her  own  in  the  improbable  event  of  any  of  her  neighbors  attempting  to  in- 
vade her.  For  myself,  I  can  recollect  no  instance  recorded  by  history  of  any 
foreign  war  wherein  England  took  part,  from  which  good  temper,  discretion, 
judgment,  and  justice  would  not  alike  have  counselled  her  to  hold  aloof. 

Such  then  are  in  substance  the  changes  which  are  proposed  for  the  recon- 
struction of  the  English  army.  The  one  grand  reform  or  revolution  is  the  aboli- 


THE  DUKE  OF  CAMBRIDGE.  95 

tion  of  the  purchase  system.  This  change  will  inevitably  convert  the  army  into 
a  practical  and  regular  profession,  to  which  all  classes  will  look  as  a  possible 
means  of  providing  for  some  of  their  children.  It  will  have  one  advantage  over 
the  bar,  that  admission  to  the  ranks  of  the  officers  will  not  necessarily  involve 
the  preliminary  payment  of  any  sum  of  money,  however  small.  The  profession 
will  cease  to  be  ornamental  and  aristocratic.  It  will  no  longer  constitute  one 
of  the  great  props,  one  of  the  grand  privileges,  of  the  system  of  aristocracy.  Its 
reorganization  will  be  another  and  a  bold  step  toward  the  establishment  of  that 
principle  of  equality  which  is  of  late  years  beginning  to  exercise  so  powerful  a 
fascination  over  the  popular  mind  of  England.  Caste  had  in  Great  Britain  no 
such  illustration  and  no  such  bulwark  as  the  army  system  presented.  I  should 
be  slow  to  undertake  to  limit  the  possible  depth  and  extent  of  the  influence 
which  the  impulse  given  by  this  reform  may  exercise  over  the  political  condi- 
tion of  England.  I  can  hardly  realize  to  myself  by  any  effort  of  imagination  the 
effect  which  such  a  change  will  work  in  what  is  called  society  in  England,  and  in 
the  literature,  especially  the  romantic  and  satirical  literature,  of  the  country.  Are 
we  then  no  longer  to  have  Rawdon  Crawley,  and  Sir  Derby  Oaks,  and  "  Cap- 
tain Gandaw  of  the  Pinks  "  ?  Was  Black-Bottle  Cardigan  really  the  last  of  a 
race  ?  Will  people  a  generation  hence  fail  to  understand  what  was  meant  by 
the  intimation  that  "  the  Tenth  don't  dance  "  ?  Is  Guy  Livingstone  to  be- 
come as  utter  a  tradition  and  myth  as  Guy  of  Warwick  ?  Is  the  English  mili- 
tary officer  to  be  henceforward  simply  a  hard-working,  well-qualified  public 
servant,  who  obtains  his  place  in  open  competition  by  virtue  of  his  merits  ? 
Appreciate  the  full  meaning  of  the  change  who  can,  it  is  too  much  for  me ;  I 
can  only  wonder,  admire,  and  hope.  But  it  is  surely  not  possible  that  the  Duke 
of  Cambridge,  cousin  of  the  Queen,  can  continue  to  preside  over  a  service 
wherein  the  butcher,  the  baker,  and  the  candlestick-maker  have  as  good  a 
chance  of  obtaining  commissions  for  their  sons  as  the  marquis  or  the  earl  or 
the  great  millionaire.  Only  think  of  the  flood  of  light  which  will  be  poured  in 
upon  all  the  details  of  the  military  organization,  when  once  it  becomes  the  direct 
interest  of  each  of  us  to  see  that  the  profession  is  properly  managed  in  which 
his  own  son,  however  poor  in  purse  and  humble  in  rank,  has  a  chance  of  ob- 
taining a  commission  !  I  believe  the  Duke  of  Cambridge  had  and  has  an  honest 
hatred  and  contempt  for  the  coarse  and  noisy  interference  of  public  and  unpro- 
fessional criticism  where  the  business  of  the  sacred  Horse  Guards  is  concerned. 
Once,  when  goaded  on  to  sheer  desperation  by  comments  in  the  papers,  his  Royal 
Highness  actually  wrote  or  dictated  a  letter  of  explanation  to  the  "  Times," 
signed  with  the  monosyllabic  grandeur  of  his  name  "  George,"  we  all  held  up  the 
hands  and  eyes  of  wonder  that  such  things  had  come  to  pass,  that  royal  princes 
condescended  to  write  to  newspapers,  and  yet  the  world  rolled  on.  I  cannot 
think  the  Duke  will  abide  the  awful  changes  that  are  coming.  He  will  proba- 
bly pass  into  the  twilight  and  repose  of  some  dignified  office,  where  blundering 
has  no  occupation  and  obstinacy  can  do  no  harm.  Everything  considered,  I 
think  we  may  say  of  him  that  he  might  have  been  a  great  deal  worse  than  he  was. 
My  own  impression  is  that  he  is  rather  better  than  his  reputation.  If  the  popular 
voice  of  England  were  to  ask  in  the  words  of  Shakespeare's  "  Lucio,"  "And 
was  the  Duke  a  fleshmonger,  a  fool,  and  a  coward,  as  you  then  reported  him  to 
be?"  I  might  answer,  in  the  language  of  the  pretended  friar,  "You  must 
change  persons  with  me  ere  you  make  that  my  report.  You  indeed  spoke  so  of 
him,  and  much  more,  much  worse." 


BRIGHAM  YOUNG. 


THOSE  among  us  who  are  not  too  young  to  have  had  "  Evenings  at  Home  " 
for  a  schoolday  companion  and  instructor  will  remember  the  story  called 
"  Eyes  and  No  Eyes  "  and  its  moral.  They  will  remember  that,  of  the  two  little 
boys  who  accomplished  precisely  the  same  walk  at  the  same  time,  one  saw  all 
manner  of  delightful  and  wonderful  things,  while  the  other  saw  nothing  whatever 
that  was  worth  recollection  or  description.  The  former  had  eyes  prepared  to 
see,  and  the  other  had  not ;  and  that  made  all  the  difference.  I  have  to  confess 
that,  during  a  recent  visit  to  Salt  Lake  City — a  visit  lasting  nearly  as  many  days 
as  that  out  of  which  my  friend,  Hepworth  Dixon,  made  the  better  part  of  a  vol- 
ume— I  must  have  been  in  the  condition  of  the  dull  little  reprobate  who  had  no 
eyes  to  see  the  wonders  which  delighted  his  companion.  For,  so  far  as  the  city 
itself,  its  streets  and  its  structures,  are  concerned,  I  really  saw  nothing  in  partic- 
ular. A  muddy  little  country  town,  with  one  or  two  tolerably  decent  streets, 
wherein  a  few  handsome  stores  are  mixed  up  with  old  shanties,  is  not  much  to 
see  in  any  part  of  the  civilized  world.  Other  travellers  have  seen  a  wondrous 
sight  on  the  very  same  spot.  They  have  seen  a  large  and  beautiful  city,  with 
spacious,  splendid  streets,  shaded  by  majestic  trees  and  watered  by  silvery  cur- 
rents flowing  in  marble  channels  ;  they  have  seen  a  city  combining  the  cleanli- 
ness and  activity  of  young  America  with  the  picturesqueness  and  dignity  of  the 
Orient;  a  city  which  would  be  beautiful  and  wonderful  anywhere,  but  which, 
raised  up  here  on  the  bare  bosom  of  the  desert,  is  a  phenomenon  of  apparently 
almost  magical  creation.  Naturally,  therefore,  they  have  gone  into  raptures  over 
the  energy,  and  industry,  and  aestheticism  of  the  Mormons  ;  and,  even  while  con- 
demning sternly  the  doctrine  and  practice  of  polygamy,  they  have  nevertheless 
been  haunted  by  an  uneasy  doubt  as  to  whether,  after  all,  there  is  not  some  peculiar 
virtue  in  the  having  half  a  dozen  wives  together  which  endows  a  man  with  super- 
human gifts  as  a  builder  of  cities.  Otherwise  how  comes  this  beautiful  and  per- 
fect city,  here  on  the  unfriendly  and  unsheltering  waste  ? 

Well,  I  saw  no  beautiful  and  wonderful  city,  although  I  spent  several  days  in 
the  Mormon  capital,  and  tramped  every  one  of  its  streets,  and  lanes,  and  roads, 
scores  of  times  over.  Where  others  beheld  the  glorious  virgin,  Dulcinea  del 
Toboso,  radiant  in  beauty  and  bedight  with  queenly  apparel,  I  saw  only  the 
homely  milkmaid,  with  her  red  elbows  and  her  russet  gown.  In  plain  words, 
the  Mormon  city  appeared  to  me  just  a  commonplace  little  country  town,  and  no 
more.  I  saw  in  it  no  evidences  of  preternatural  energy  or  skill.  It  has  one  de- 
cent street,  wherein  may  be  found,  at  most,  half  a  dozen  well-built  and  attractive- 
looking  shops.  It  has  a  good  many  comfortable  residences  in  the  environs.  It 
has  two  or  three  decentish  hotels,  like  the  hotels  of  any  other  fiftieth-class  coun- 
try town.  It  has  the  huge  Tabernacle,  a  gigantic  barn  merely,  a  simple  covering 
in  and  over  of  so  much  space — a  thing  in  shape  "  very  like  a  land  turtle,"  as 
President  George  L.  Smith,  First  Councillor  of  Brigham  Young,  observed  to  me. 
Salt  Lake  City  has  no  lighting  and  no  draining,  except  such  draining  as  is  done 
by  the  little  runnels  of  water  to  be  found  in  every  street,  and  which  remind  one 
faintly  and  sadly  of  dear,  quaint  old  Berne  in  Switzerland.  At  night  you  have 
to  trudge  along  in  the  darkness  and  the  mud,  or  slush,  or  dust,  and  it  is  a  peril- 
ous quest  the  seeking  of  your  way  home,  for  at  every  crossing  you  must  look  or 
feel  for  the  plar.k  which  bridges  over  the  artificial  brooklets  already  described, 


BRIGilAM   YOUNG.  97 

or  you  plunge  helpless  and  hopeless  into  the  little  torrent.  Decidedly,  a  "one- 
horse  "  place,  in  my  estimation  ;  I  don't  see  how  men  endowed  with  average 
heads  and  arms  could  for  twenty  years  have  been  occupied  in  the  building  of  a 
city,  and  produced  anything  less  creditable  than  this.  I  do  not  wonder  at  the 
complacency  and  self-conceit  with  which  all  the  Mormon  residents  talk  of  the 
beauty  of  their  city  and  the  wonderful  things  they  have  accomplished,  when 
Gentile  travellers  of  credit  and  distinction  have  glorified  this  shabby,  swampy, 
ricketty,  common-place,  vulgar,  little  hamlet  into  a  town  of  sweetness  and  light, 
of  symmetry  and  beauty.  For  my  part,  and  for  those  who  were  with  me,  I  can 
only  say  that  we  spent  the  first  day  o'  so  in  perpetual  wonder  as  to  whether  this 
really  could  be  the  Mormon  city  of  w.iich  we  had  read  so  many  bewildering  and 
glorious  descriptions.  And  the  theatre — oh,  Hepworth  Dixon,  I  like  you  much, 
and  I  think  you  are  often  abused  and  assailed  most  unjustly  ;  but  how  could  you 
write  so  about  that  theatre  ?  Or  was  the  beautiful  temple  of  the  drama  which 
you  saw  here  deliberately  taken  down,  and  did  they  raise  in  its  place  the  big, 
gaunt,  ugly,  dirty,  dismal  structure  which  /saw,  and  in  which  I  and  my  compan- 
ions made  part  of  a  dreary  dozen  or  two  of  audience,  and  blinked  in  the  dim,  de- 
pressing light  of  mediaeval  oil-lamps?  I  observe  that,  when  driven  to  bay  by 
sceptical  inquiry,  complacent  Mormons  generally  fall  back  on  the  abundance  of 
shade-trees  in  the  streets.  Let  them  have  the  full  credit  of  this  plantation. 
They  have  put  trees  in  the  streets,  and  the  trees  have  grown  ;  and,  when  we  ob- 
serve to  a  Mormon  that  we  have  seen  rows  of  trees  similarly  growing  in  even 
smaller  towns  of  the  benighted  European  continent,  he  evidently  thinks  it  is  our 
monogamic  perversity  and  prejudice  which  force  us  to  deny  the  wondrous  works 
of  Mormonism.  Making  due  allowance  for  every  natural  difficulty,  remember- 
ing how  nearly  every  implement,  and  utensil,  and  scrap  of  raw  material  had  to 
be  brought  from  across  yonder  rampart  of  mountains,  and  from  hundreds  of 
miles  away,  I  yet  fail  to  see  anything  very  remarkable  about  this  little  Mormon 
town.  Perhaps  no  other  set  of  people  could  have  made  much  more  of  the  place  ; 
I  cannot  help  thinking*  that  no  other  set  of  people  who  were  not  Digger  Indians 
could  have  made  much  less. 

In  fact,  to  retain  the  proper  and  picturesque  ideas  of  Salt  Lake  City,  one  nev- 
er ought  to  have  entered  the  town  at  all.  We  ought  to  have  remained  on  this 
hillside,  from  which  you  can  look  across  that  most  lovely  of  all  valleys  on  earth, 
cinctured  as  it  is  by  a  perfect  girdle  of  mountains,  the  outlines  of  which  are  peer- 
less and  ineffable  in  their  symmetry  and  beauty.  The  air  is  as  clear,  the  skies 
are  as  blue,  the  grass  as  green  as  the  dream  of  a  poet  or  painter  could  show  him. 
There  below,  fringed  and  mantled  in  the  clustering  green  of  its  trees,  you  see  the 
city,  with  the  long,  low,  rounded  dome  or  back  of  the  Tabernacle  rising  broad  and 
conspicuous.  Looking  down,  you  may  well  believe  that  the  city  thus  exquisitely 
placed,  thus  deliciously  shaded  and  surrounded,  is  itself  a  wonder  of  picturesque- 
ness  and  symmetry.  Why  go  down  into  the  two  or  three  dirty,  irregular,  shabby 
little  streets,  with  their  dust  or  mud  for  road  pavement,  their  nozzling  pigs  trot- 
ting along  the  sidewalks,  their  dung-heaps  and  masses  of  decaying  vegetable 
matter,  their  utterly  commonplace,  mean  and  disheartening  aspect  everywhere : 
But  then  we  did  go  down — and  where  others  had  seen  a  fair  and  goodly,  aye, 
and  queenly  city,  we  saw  a  muddy,  uninteresting,  straggling  little  village,  disfig- 
uring the  lovely  plain  on  which  it  stood. 

Profound  disappointment,  then,  is  my  first  sensation  in  Salt  Lake  City.  The 
place  is  so  like  any  other  place  !  Certainly,  one  receives  a  bracing  little  shock 
every  now  and  then,  which  admonishes  hirr.  that,  despite  the  small,  shabby  storesi 


98  BRIGHAM  YOUNG. 

and  the  pigs,  and  the  dunghills,  he  is  not  in  the  regions  of  merely  commonplace 
dirt.  For  instance,  we  learn  that  the  proprietor  of  the  hotel  where  we  are  stay- 
ing has  four  wives  ;  and  it  is  something  odd  to  talk  with  a  civil,  respectable,  bur- 
gess-like man,  dressed  in  ordinary  coat  and  pantaloons,  and  wearing  mutton-chop 
whiskers — a  sort  of  man  who  in  England  would  probably  be  a  church-warden — 
and  who  has  more  consorts  than  an  average  Turk.  Then  again  it  is  startling  to 

be  asked,  "  Do  you  know  Mr. ? "  and  when  I  say  "  No,  I  don't,"  to  be  told, 

"  Oh,  you  ought  to  know  him.  He  came  from  England,  and  he  has  lately  mar- 
ried two  such  nice  English  girls  !  "  One  morning,  too,  we  have  another  kind  of 
shock.  There  is  a  pretty  little  chambermaid  in  our  hotel,  a  new-comer  apparent- 
ly, and  she  happens  to  find  out  that  my  wife  and  I  had  lived  for  many  years  in 
that  part  of  the  North  of  England  from  which  she  comes  herself,  whereupon  she 
bursts  into  a  perfect  passion  and  tempest  of  tears,  declares  that  she  would  rather 
be  in  her  grave  than  in  Salt  Lake  City,  that  she  was  deceived  into  coming,  that 
the  Mormonism  she  heard  preached  by  the  Mormon  propaganda  in  England  was 
a  quite  different  thing  from  the  Mormonism  practised  here,  and  that  her  only 
longing  was  to  get  out  of  the  place,  anyhow,  forever.  The  girl  seemed  to  be 
perfectly,  passionately  sincere.  What  could  be  done  for  her  ?  Apparently 
nothing.  She  had  spent  all  her  money  in  coming  out ;  and  she  seemed  to  be 
strongly  under  the  conviction  that,  even  if  she  had  money,  she  could  not  get 
away.  An  influence  was  evidently  over  her  which  she  had  not  the  courage  or 
strength  of  mind  to  attempt  to  resist,  or  even  to  elude.  Doubtless,  as  she  was  a 
very  pretty  girl,  she  would  be  very  soon  sealed  to  some  ruling  elder.  She  said 
her  sister  had  come  with  her,  but  the  sister  was  in  another  part  of  the  city,  and 
since  their  arrival — only  a  few  days,  however — they  had  not  met.  My  wife  en- 
deavored to  console  or  encourage  her,  but  the  girl  could  only  sob  and  protest 
that  she  never  could  learn  to  endure  the  place,  but  that  she  could  not  get  away, 
and  that  she  would  rather  be  in  her  grave.  We  spoke  of  this  case  to  one  of  the 
civil  officers  of  the  United  States  stationed  in  the  city,  and  he  shook  his  head 
and  thought  nothing  could  be  done.  The  influence  which  enslaved  this  poor 
girl  was  not  wholly  that  of  force,  but  a  power  which  worked  upon  her  senses  and 
her  superstitions.  I  should  think  an  underground  railway  would  be  a  valuable 
institution  to  establish  in  connection  with  the  Mormon  city. 

I  well  remember  that  when  I  lived  in  Liverpool,  some  ten  or  a  dozen  years 
ago,  the  Mormon  propaganda,  very  active  there,  always  kept  the  polygamy  insti- 
tution modestly  in  the  background.  Proselytes  were  courted  and  won  by  de- 
scriptions of  a  new  Happy  Valley,  of  a  City  of  the  Blest,  where  eternal  summer 
shone,  where  the  fruits  were  always  ripe,  where  the  earth  smiled  with  a  perpet- 
ual harvest,  where  labor  and  reward  were  plenty  for  all,  and  where  the  outworn 
toilers  of  Western  Europe  could  renew  their  youth  like  the  eagles.  I  remember, 
too,  the  remarkable  case  of  a  Liverpool  family  having  a  large  business  establish- 
ment in  the  most  fashionable  street  of  the  great  town,  who  were  actually  beguiled 
into  selling  off  all  their  goods  and  property  and  migrating,  parents,  sons,  and 
daughters,  to  the  land  of  promise  beyond  the  American  wilderness,  and  how,  be- 
fore people  had  ceased  to  wonder  at  their  folly,  they  all  came  back,  humiliated, 
disgusted,  .cured.  They  had  money  and  something  like  education,  and  they 
were  a  whole  family,  and  so  they  were  able,  when  they  found  themselves  de- 
ceived, to  effect  a  rapid  retreat  at  the  cost  of  nothing  worse  than  disappointment 
and  pecuniary  loss.  But  for  the  poor,  pretty  serving-lass  from  Lancashire  I  do 
not  know  that  there  is  much  hope.  Poverty  and  timidity  and  superstitious 
weakness  will  help  to  lock  the  Mormon  chains  around  her.  Perhaps  she  will 


BRIGHAM  YOUNG.  99 

get  used  to  the  place  in  time.  Ought  one  to  wish  that  she  may — or  rather  to 
echo  her  own  prayer,  and  petition  that  she  may  find  an  early  grave  ?  The  grave- 
yards are  densely  planted  with  tombs  here  in  this  sacred  city  of  Mormonism. 

The  place  is  unspeakably  dreary.  Hardly  any  women  are  ever  seen  in  the 
streets,  except  on  the  Sunday,  when  all  the  families  pour  in  to  service  in  the 
.huge  Tabernacle.  Most  of  the  dwelling  houses  round  the  city  are  pent  in  behind 
walls.  Most  of  the  houses,  too,  have  their  dismal  little  sucursales,  one  or  two 
or  more,  built  on  to  the  sides — and  in  each  of  these  additions  or  wings  to  the 
original  building  a  different  wife  and  family  are  caged.  There  are  no  flower  gar- 
dens anywhere.  Children  are  bawling  everywhere.  Sometimes  a  wretched, 
slatternly,  dispirited  woman  is  seen  lounging  at  the  door  or  hanging  over  the 
gate  of  a  house  with  a  baby  at  her  breast.  More  often,  however,  the  house,  or 
clump  of  houses,  gives  no  external  sign  of  life.  It  stands  back  gloomy  in  the 
sullen  shade  of  its  thick  fruit  trees,  and  might  seem  untenanted  if  one  did  not 
hear  the  incessant  yelling  of  the  children.  We  saw  the  women  in  hundreds, 
probably  in  thousands,  at  the  Tabernacle  on  the  Sunday — and  what  women  they 
were  !  Such  faces,  so  dispirited,  depressed,  shapeless,  hopeless,  soulless  faces  ! 
No  trace  of  woman's  graceful  pride  and  neatness  in  these  slatternly,  shabby, 
slouching,  listless  figures  ;  no  purple  light  of  youth  over  these  cheeks  ;  no  sparkle 
in  these  half-extinguished  eyes.  I  protest  that  only  in  some  of  the  cretin  vil- 
lages of  the  Swiss  mountains  have  I  seen  creatures  in  female  form  so  dull,  miser- 
able, moping,  hopeless  as  the  vast  majority  of  these  Mormon  women.  As  we 
leave  the  Tabernacle,  and  walk  slowly  down  the  street  amid  the  crowd,  we  see 
two  prettily-dressed,  lively-looking  girls,  who  laugh  with  each  other  and  are  seem- 
ingly happy,  and  we  thank  Heaven  that  there  are  at  least  two  merry,  spirited 
girls  in  Salt  Lake  City.  A  few  days  after  we  meet  our  blithesome  pair  at  Min- 
tah  station  ;  and  they  are  travelling  with  their  father  and  mother  on  to  San  Fran- 
cisco, whither  we  too  are  going — and  we  learn  that  they  are  not  Mormons,  but 
Gentiles — pleasant  lasses  from  Philadelphia  who  had  come  with  their  parents  to 
have  a  passing  look  at  the  externals  of  Mormonism. 

My  object,  however,  in  writing  this  paper  was  to  speak  of  the  chief,  Brig- 
ham  Young  himself,  rather  than  of  his  city  or  his  system.  We  saw  Brigham 
Young,  were  admitted  to  prolonged  speech  of  him,  and  received  his  parting  ben- 
ediction. The  interview  took  place  in  the  now  famous  house  with  the  white 
walls  and  the  gilded  beehive  on  the  top.  We  were  received  in  a  kind  of  office 
or  parlor,  hung  round  with  oil  paintings  of  the  kind  which  in  England  we  regard 
as  "  furniture,"  and  which  represented  all  the  great  captains  and  elders  of  Mor- 
monism. Joseph  Smith  is  there,  and  Brigham  Young,  and  George  L.  Smith, 
now  First  Councillor  ;  and  various  others  whom  to  enumerate  would  be  long,  even 
if  I  knew  or  remembered  their  names.  President  Young  was  engaged  just  at 
the  moment  when  we  came,  but  his  Secretary,  a  Scotchman,  I  think,  and  Presi- 
dent George  L.  Smith,  are  very  civil  and  cordial.  George  L.  Smith  is  a  huge, 
burly  man,  with  a  Friar  Tuck  joviality  of  paunch  and  visage,  and  a  roll  in  his 
bright  eye  which,  in  some  odd,  undefined  sort  of  way,  suggests  cakes  and  ale. 
He  talks  well,  in  a  deep  rolling  voice,  and  with  a  dash  of  humor  in  his  words  and 
tone — he  it  is  who  irreverently  but  accurately  likens  the  Tabernacle  to  a  land- 
turtle.  He  speaks  with  immense  admiration  and  reverence  of  Brigham  Young, 
and  specially  commends  his  abstemiousness  and  hermit-like  frugality  in  the  mat- 
ter of  eating  and  drinking.  Presently  a  door  opens,  and  the  oddest,  most  whim- 
sical figure  I  have  ever  seen  off  the  boards  of  an  English  country  theatre  stands 
in  the  room  ;  and  in  a  moment  we  are  presented  formally  to  Brigham  Young. 


100  BRIGHAM  YOUNG. 

There  must  be  something  of  Impressiveness  and  dignity  about  the  man,  for, 
odd  as  is  his  appearance  and  make  up,  one  feels  no  inclination  to  laugh.  But 
such  a  figure  !  Brigham  Young  wears  a  long-tailed,  high-collared  coat ;  the 
swallow-tails  nearly  touch  the  ground  ;  the  collar  is  about  his  ears.  In  shape  the 
garment  is  like  the  swallow-tail  coats  which  negro-melodists  sometimes  wear, 
or  like  the  dandy  English  dress  coat  one  can  still  see  in  prints  in  some  of  the 
shops  of  St.  James  street,  London.  But  the  material  of  Brigham's  coat  is  some 
kind  of  rough,  gray  frieze,  and  the  garment  is  adorned  with  huge  brass  buttons. 
The  vest  and  trowsers  are  of  the  same  material.  Rouird  the  neck  of  the  patri- 
arch is  some  kind  of  bright  crimson  shawl,  and  on  the  patriarch's  feet  are  natty 
liltle  boots  of  the  shiniest  polished  leather.  I  must  say  that  the  gray  frieze  coat 
of  antique  and  wonderful  construction,  the  gaudy  crimson  shawl,  and  the  dandy 
boots  make  up  an  incongruous  whole  which  irresistibly  reminds  one  at  first  of 
the  holiday  get-up  of  some  African  King  who  adds  to  a  great  coat,  preserved  as 
an  heirloom  since  Mungo  Park's  day,  a  pair  of  modern  top-boots,  and  a  lady's 
bonnet.  The  whole  appearance  of  the  patriarch,  when  one  has  got  over  the  Af- 
rican monarch  impression,  is  like  that  of  a  Suffolk  farmer  as  presented  on  the 
boards  of  a  Surrey  theatre.  But  there  is  decidedly  an  amount  of  composure 
and  even  of  dignity  about  Brigham  Young  which  soon  makes  one  forget  the 
mere  ludicrousness  of  the  patriarch's  external  appearance.  Young  is  a  hand- 
some man — much  handsomer  than  his  portrait  on  the  wall  would  show  him. 
Close  upon  seventy  years  of  age,  he  has  as  clear  an  eye  and  as  bright  a  com- 
plexion as  if  he  were  a  hale  English  farmer  of  fifty-five.  But  there  is  something 
fox-like  and  cunning  lurking  under  the  superficial  good-nature  and  kindliness  of 
the  face.  He  seems,  when  he  speaks  to  you  most  effusively  and  plausibly,  to  be 
quietly  studying  your  expression  to  see  whether  he  is. really  talking  you  over  or 
not.  The  expression  of  his  face,  especially  of  his  eyes,  strangely  and  provok- 
ingly  reminds  me  of  Kossuth.  I  think  I  have  seen  Kossuth  thus  watch  the  face 
of  a  listener  to  see  whether  or  not  the  listener  was  conquered  by  his  wonder- 
ful power  of  talk.  Kossuth's  face,  apart  from  its  intellectual  qualities,  appeared 
to  me  to  express  a  strange  blending  of  vanity,  craft,  and  weakness  ;  and  Brig- 
ham  Young's  countenance  now  seems  to  show  just  such  a  mixture  of  qualities. 
Great  force  of  character  the  man  must  surely  have  ;  great  force  of  character 
Kossuth,  too.  had  ;  but  the  face  of  neither  man  seemed  to  declare  the  possession 
of  such  a  quality.  Brigham  Young  decidedly  does  not  impress  me  as  a  man  of 
great  ability;  but  rather  as  a  man  of  great  plausibility.  I  can  at  once  under- 
stand how  such  a  man,  with  such  an  eye  and  tongue,  can  easily  exert  an  immense 
influence  over  women.  Beyond  doubt  he  is  a  man  of  genius  ;  but  his  genius 
does  not  reveal  itself,  to  me  at  .least,  in  his  face  or  his  words.  He  speaks  in  a 
thin,  clear,  almost  shrill  tone,  and  with  much  apparent  bonJiomie.  After  a  little 
commonplace  conversation  about  the  city,  its  improvements,  approaches  etc.,  the 
Prophet  voluntarily  goes  on  to  speak  of  himself,  his  system,  and  his  calumnia- 
tors. His  talk  soon  flows  into  a  kind  of  monologue,  and  is  indeed  a  curious 
rhapsody  of  religion,  sentimentality,  shrewdness  and  egotism.  Sometimes  sev- 
eral sentences  succeed  each  other  in  which  his  hearers  hardly  seem  to  make  out 
any  meaning  whatever,  and  Brigham  Young  appears  a  grotesque  kind  of  Cole- 
ridge. Then  again  in  a  moment  comes  up  a  shrewd  meaning  very  distinctly  ex- 
pressed, and  with  a  dash  of  humor  and  sarcasm  gleaming  fantastically  amid  the 
scriptural  allusions  and  the  rhapsody  of  unctuous  words.  The  purport  of  the 
whole  is  that  Brigham  Young  has  been  misunderstood,  misprized,  and  calumni- 
ated, even  as  Christ  was  ;  that  were  Christ  to  come  up  to-morrow  in  New  York 


BRIGHAM  YOUNG.  101 

or  London  He  would  be  misundertsood,  misprized,  and  caluminated,  even  as  Brig- 
ham  Young  now  is  ;  and  that  Brigham  Young  is  not  to  be  dismayed  though  the 
stars  in  their  courses  should  fight  against  him.;  He  protests  wijlilespecial  emphasis 
and  at  the  same  time  especial  meekness^,  wrth'  eye's  half  closed'  and  delicately- 
modulated  voice,  against  the  false  reports'  tllat'an^  ^ariuarpf'forte/or  influence 
whatever  is,  or  ever  was,  exercised  to  "keep  men 'or  women'  iri'Sdn  "Lake  City 
against  their  will.  He  appeals  to  the  evidence  of  our  own  eyes,  and  asks  us 
whether  we  have  not  seen  for  ourselves  that  the  city  is  free  to  all  to  come  and 
go  as  they  will.  At  this  time  we  had  not  heard  the  story  told  by  the  poor  little 
maid  at  the  hotel ;  but  in  any  case  the  evidence  of  our  eyes  could  go  no  farther 
*han  to  prove  that  travellers  like  ourselves  were  free  to  enter  and  depart.  We 
have,  however,  little  occasion  to  trouble  ourselves  about  answering ;  for  the 
Prophet  keeps  the  talk  pretty  well  all  to  himself.  His  manner  is  certainly  not 
that  of  a  man  of  culture,  but  it  has  a  good  deal  of  the  quiet  grace  and  self-pos- 
session of  what  we  call  a  gentleman.  There  is  nothing prononcc  or  vulgar  about 
him.  Even  when  he  is  most  rhapsodical  his  speech  never  loses  its  ease  and 
gentleness  of  tone.  He  is  bland,  benevolent,  sometimes  quietly  pathetic  in  man- 
ner. He  poses  himself  en  victime,  but  with  the  air  of  one  who  does  this  regret- 
fully and  only  from  a  disinterested  sense  of  duty.  I  begin  very  soon  to  find  that 
there  is  no  need  of  my  troubling  myself  much  to  keep  up  the  conversation  ;  that 
my  business  is  that  of  a  listener  ;  that  the  Prophet  conceives  himself  to  be  ad- 
dressing some  portion  of  the  English  or  American  press  through  my  humble 
medium.  So  I  listen  and  my  companion  listens  ;  and  Brigham  Young  talks  on  ; 
and  I  do  declare  and  acknowledge  that  we  are  fast  drifting  into  a  hazy  mental 
condition  by  virtue  of  which  we  begin  to  regard  the  Mormon  President  as  a  vic- 
tim of  cruel  persecution,  a  suffering  martyr  and  an  injured  angel ! 

Time,  surely,  that  the  interview  should  come  to  a  close.  We  tear  ourselves 
away,  and  the  Prophet  dismisses  us  with  a  fervent  and  effusive  blessing. 
"  Good-bye — do  well,  mean  well,  pray  always.  Christ  be  with  you,  God  be  with 
you,  God  bless  you."  All  this,  and  a  great  deal  more  to  the  same  effect,  was 
uttered  with  no  vulgar,  maw-worm  demonstrativeness  of  tone  or  gesture,  no 
nasal  twang,  no  uplifted  hands ;  but  quietly,  earnestly,  as  if  it  came  unaffectedly 
from  the  heart  of  the  speaker.  We  took  leave  of  Brigham  Young,  and  came 
away  a  little  puzzled  as  to  whether  we  had  been  conversing  with  an  impostor  or 
a  fanatic,  a  Peter  the  Hermit  or  a  Tartuffe.  One  thing,  however,  is  clear  to  me. 
I  do  not  say  that  Brigham  Young  is  a  Tartuffe ;  but  I  know  now  how  Tartuffe 
ought  to  be  played  so  as  to  render  the  part  more  effective  and  more  apparently 
natural  and  lifelike  than  I  have  ever  seen  it  on  French  or  English  stage. 

No  one  can  doubt  the  sincerity  of  the  homage  which  the  Mormons  in  gener- 
al pay  to  Brigham  Young.  One  man,  of  the  working  class,  apparently,  with 
whom  I  talked  at  the  gate  of  the  Tabernacle,  spoke  almost  with  tears  in  his  eyes 
of  the  condescension  the  Prophet  always  manifested.  My  informant  told  me 
that  he  was  at  one  time  disabled  by  some  hurt  or  ailment ;  and,  the  first  day  that 
he  was  able  to  come  into  the  street  again,  President  Young  happened  to  be  pass- 
ing in  his  carriage,  and  caught  sight  of  the  convalescent.  "  He  stopped  his  car- 
riage, sir,  called  me  over  to  him,  addressed  me  by  my  name,  shook  hands  with 
me,  asked  me  how  I  was  getting  on,  and  said  he  was  glad  to  see  me  out  again." 
The  poor  man  was  as  proud  of  this  as  a  French  soldier  might  have  been  if  the 
Little  Corporal  had  recognized  him  and  called  him  by  his  name.  There  is  no 
flattery  which  the  great  can  offer  to  the  humble  like  this  way  of  addressing  the 
man  by  his  right  name,  and  thus  proving  that  the  identity  of  the  small  creature 


102  BRIGHAM  YOUNG. 

has  lived  clearly  in  the  memory  of  the  great  being.  Many  a  renowned  com- 
mander has  endear.ed  himself!  to, the  soldiers  whom  he  regarded  and  treated  only 
as  the  instruments' of  his_.bvrsii'se^s.  by  the  mere  fact  that  he  took  care  to  remem- 
ber men's  names.  .They  would  gladly  die  for  one  who  could  be  so  nobly  gracious, 
and  could  thasrprovQ  tjiat.thQy.  were  regarded  by  him  as  worthy  to  occupy  each 
a  distinct  place  in  his  busy  mind.  The  niggardliness  and  selfishness  of  John, 
Duke  of  Marlborough,  the  savage  recklessness  of  Claverhouse,  were  easily  for- 
gotten by  the  poor  private  soldiers  whom  each  commander  made  it  his  business, 
when  occasion  required,  to  address  correctly  by  their  appropriate  names  of  Tom, 
Dick,  or  Harry.  Lord  Palmerston  governed  the  House  of  Commons  and  most 
of  those  outside  it  with  whom  he  usually  came  into  contact,  by  just  such  little  arts 
or  courtesies  as  this.  In  one  of  Messrs.  Erckmann  and  Chatrian's  novels  we 
read  of  a  soldier  who  declares  himself  ready  to  go  to  the  death  for  Marshal  Ney 
because  the  Marshal,  who  originally  belonged  to  the  same  district  as  himself, 
had  just  recognized  his  fellow-countryman  and  called  him  by  his  name.  But 
the  hero  of  the  novel  is  somewhat  grim  and  sarcastic,  and  he  thinks  it  was  not 
so,  wonderful  a  condescension  that  Ney  should  have  recognized  an  old  comrade 
and  called  him  by  his  name.  Perhaps  the  hero  of  the  tale  had  not  himself  re- 
ceived any  such  recognition  from  Ney — perhaps  if  it  had  been  vouchsafed  to  him 
he,  too,  would  have  been  ready  to  go  to  the  death.  Anyhow,  this  correct  calling 
of  names,  and  quick  recognition  has  always  been  a  great  power  in  the  governing 
of  men  and  women.  "  Deal  you  in  words,"  is  the  advice  of  Mephistophiles  to 
the  student,  in  Faust,  "and  you  may  leave  others  to  do  the  best  they  can  with 
things."  I  was  able  to  appreciate  the  governing  power  of  Brigham  Young  all 
the  better  when  I  had  heard  the  expression  of  this  poor  Mormon's  gratitude  and 
homage  to  the  great  President  who  had  shaken  hands  with  him  and  addressed 
him  promptly  and  correctly  by  his  name. 

This  same  Mormon  was  very  communicative.  Indeed,  as  a  rule,  I  found 
most  of  the  men  in  Salt  Lake  City  ready  and  even  eager  to  discuss  their  "pecu- 
liar institution,"  and  to  invite  Gentile  opinion  on  it.  He  showed  us  his  two  wives, 
and  declared  that  they  lived  together  in  perfect  harmony  and  happiness  ;  never 
had  a  word  of  quarrel,  but  were  contented  and  loving  as  two  sisters.  He  deliv- 
ered a  panegyric  on  the  moral  condition  of  Salt  Lake  City,  where,  he  declared, 
there  was  no  dishonesty,  no  drunkenness,  and  no  prostitution.  I  believe  he  was 
correct  in  his  description  of  the  place.  From  many  quite  impartial  authorities 
I  heard  the  same  accounts  of  the  honesty  of  the  Mormons.  There  certainly  is 
no  drunkenness  to  be  observed  anywhere  openly,  and  I  believe  (although  I  have 
heard  others  assert  the  contrary)  that  Salt  Lake  City  is  really  and  truly  free  from 
this  vice  ;  and  I  suppose  it  goes  without  saying  that  there  is  little  or  no  prostitu- 
tion in  a  place  where  a  man  is  expected  to  keep  as  many  wives  as  his  means  will 
allow  him.  Intelligent  Mormons  rely  immensely  on  this  absence  of  prostitution 
as  a  justification  of  their  system.  They  seem  to  think  that  when  they  have  said, 
"We  have  no  prostitutes,"  all  is  said;  and  that  the  Gentile,  with  the  shames  of 
London,  Paris  and  New  York  burning  in  his  memory  and  his  conscience,  must  be 
left  without  a  word  of  reply.  Brigham  Young,  in  conversation  with  me,  dwelt  much 
on  this  absence  of  prostitution.  Orson  Pratt  preached  in  the  Tabernacle  during 
our  stay  a  sermon  obviously  "at"  the  Gentile  visitors,  who  were  just  then  spe- 
cially numerous  ;  and  he  drew  an  emphatic  contrast  between  the  hideous  profli- 
gacy of  the  Eastern  cities  and  the  purity  of  the  Salt  Lake  community.  I  must 
say,  for  myself,  that  I  do  not  think  the  question  can  thus  be  settled  ;  I  do  not 
think  prostitution  so  great  an  evil  as  polygamy.  If  this  blunt  declaration  should 
shock  anybody's  moral  feelings  I  am  sorry  for  it ;  but  it  is  none  the  less  the  ex- 


BRIGHAM  YOUNG.  103 

pression  of  my  sincere  conviction.  Prr.y  do  not  set  me  down  as  excusing  pro-- 
titution.  I  think  it  the  worst  of  all  social  evils — except  polygamy.  1  think 
polygamy  the  worse  evil,  because  I  am  convinced  that,  regarded  from  a  physio- 
logical, moral,  religious,  and  even  merely  poetical  and  sentimental  point  of  view, 
the  only  true  social  bond  to  be  sought  and  maintained  and  justified  is  the  loving 
union  of  one  man  with  one  woman — at  least  until  death  shall  part  the  two.  Now, 
I  regard  the  existence  of  prostitution  as  a  proof  that  some  men  and  women  fail  to 
keep  to  the  right  path.  I  look  on  polygamy  as  a  proof  that  a  whole  community  is 
going  directly  the  wrong  way.  No  man  proposes  to  himself  to  lead  a  life  of 
profligacy.  He  falls  into  it.  He  would  get  out  of  it  if  he  only  could — if  the 
world  and  the  flesh  and  the  devil  were  not  now  and  then  too  strong  for  him. 
But  the  polygamist  deliberately  sets  up  and  justifies  and  glorifies  a  system  which 
is  as  false  to  physiology  as  it  is  to  morals.  Observe  that  I  do  not  say  the  polyg- 
amist is  necessarily  an  immoral  man.  Doubtless  he  is  often — in  Utah  I  really 
believe  he  is  commonly — a  sincere,  devoted,  mistaken  man,  who  honestly  believes 
himself  to  be  doing  right.  But  when  he  attempts  to  vindicate  his  system  on  the 
ground  that  it  banishes  prostitution,  I,  for  myself,  declare  that  I  believe  a  society 
which  has  to  put  up  with  prostitution  is  in  better  case  and  hope  than  one  which 
deliberately  adopts  polygamy.  I  am  emphatic  in  expressing  this  opinion  because, 
as  I  am  opposed  to  any  stronghanded  or  legal  movement  whatever  to  put  down 
Brigham  Young  and  his  system,  I  desire  to  have  it  clearly  understood  that  my 
opinions  on  the  subject  of  polygamy  are  quite  decided,  and  that  no  one  who  has 
clamored,  or  may  hereafter  clamor,  for  the  uprooting  of  Mormonism  by  fire  and 
sword,  can  have  less  sympathy  than  I  have  with  Mormonism's  peculiar  institution. 
Let  me  return  to  Brigham  Young.  I  saw  the  Prophet  but  twice — once  in  the 
street  and  once  in  his  own  house,  where  the  interview  took  place  which  I  have 
described.  The  day  after  that  on  which  I  last  saw  him  he  left  Salt  Lake  City 
and  went  into  the  country — some  people  said  to  avoid  the  necessity  of  meeting 
Mr.  Colfax,  who  was  just  then  expected  to  arrive  with  his  party  from  the  West. 
My  impressions,  therefore,  of  Brigham  Y'oung  and  his  personal  character  are 
necessarily  hasty,  and  probably  superficial.  I  can  only  say  that  he  did  not  im- 
press me  either  as  a  man  of  great  genius,  or  as  a  mere  charlatan.  My  impres- 
sion is  that  he  is  a  sincere  man — that  is  to  say,  a  man  who  sincerely  believes  in 
himself,  accepts  his  own  impulses,  prejudices  and  passions  as  divine  instincts 
and  intuitions  to  be  the  law  of  life  for  himself  and  others,  and  who,  therefore, 
has  attained  that  supreme  condition  of  utterly  unsparing  and  pitiless  selfishness 
when  the  voice  of  self  is  listened  to  as  the  voice  of  God.  With  such  a  sincerity 
is  quite  consistent  the  adoption  of  every  craft  and  trick  in  the  government  of 
men  and  women.  Nobody  can  doubt  that  Napoleon  I.  was  perfectly  sincere  as 
regards  his  faith  in  himself,  his  destiny,  and  his  duty  ;  and  yet  there  was  no  trick 
of  lawyer,  or  play-actor,  or  priest,  of  which  he  would  not  condescend  to  avail 
himself  if  it  served  his  purpose.  This  is  not  the  sincerity  of  a  Pascal,  or  a 
Garibaldi,  or  a  Garrison  ;  but  it  is  just  as  genuine  and  infinitely  more  common. 
It  is  the  kind  of  sincerity  which  we  meet  every  day  in  ordinary  life,  when  we  see 
some  dogmatic,  obstinate  father  of  a  family  or  sense-carrier  of  a  small  circle  try- 
ing to  mould  every  will  and  conscience  and  life  under  his  control  according  to  his 
own  pedantic  standard,  and  firmly  confident  all  the  time  that  his  own  perverseness 
and  egotism  are  a  guiding  inspiration  from  heaven.  After  all,  the  downright, 
conventional  stage-hypocrite  is  the  rarest  of  all  beings  in  real  life.  I  sometimes 
doubt  whether  there  ever  was  in  rerum  natura  any  one  such  creature.  I  sup- 
pose Tartuffe  had  persuaded  himself  into  self-worship,  into  the  conviction  that 
everything  he  said  and  did  must  be  right.  I  look  upon  Brigham  Young  as  a  man 


104  BRIGHAM  YOUNG. 

of  such  a  temperament  and  character.  Cunning  and  crafty  he  undoubtedly  is, 
unless  all  evidences  of  eye,  and  lip,  and  voice  belie  him ;  but  we  all  know  that 
many  a  fanatic  who  boldly  and  cheerfully  mounted  the  funeral  pile  or  the  scaffold 
for  his  creed  had  over  and  over  again  availed  himself  of  all  the  tricks  of  craft 
and  cunning  to  maintain  his  ascendancy  over  his  followers.  The  fanatic  is  often 
crafty  just  as  the  madman  is  :  the  presence  of  craft  in  neither  case  disproves  the 
existence  of  sincerity. 

I  believe  Brigham  Young  to  be  simply  a  crafty  fanatic.  That  he  professes 
and  leads  his  creed  of  Mormonism  merely  to  obtain  lands  and  beeves  and  wives, 
I  do  not  believe,  although  this  seems  to  be  the  general  impression  among  the 
Gentiles  who  visit  his  city.  I  am  convinced  that  he  regards  himself  as  a  prophet 
and  a  heaven-appointed  leader,  and  that  this  belief  prevents  him  from  seeing 
how  selfish  he  is  in  one  sense  and  how  ridiculous  in  another.  Any  man  who  can 
deliberately  put  on  such  a  coal  in  combination  with  such  a  pair  of  boots,  as 
Brigham  Young  displayed  during  my  interview  with  him,  must  have  a  faith  in 
himself  which  would  sustain  him  in  anything.  No  human  creature  capable  of 
looking  at  any  two  sides  of  a  question  where  he  himself  was  concerned,  ever  did 
or  could  present  himself  in  public  and  expect  to  be  reverenced  when  arrayed  in 
such  uncouth  and  preposterous  toggery. 

I  cannot  pretend  to  have  had  any  extraordinary  revelations  of  the  inner  mys- 
teries or  miseries  of  Mormonism  made  to  me  during  my  stay  at  Salt  Lake  City. 
Other  travellers,  nearly  all  other  travellers  indeed,  have  apparently  been  more 
fortunate  or  more  pushing  and  persevering.  I  fancy  it  is  rather  difficult  just  now 
to  get  to  know  much  of  the  interior  of  Mormon  households  ;  and  I  confess 
that  I  never  could  quite  understand  how  people,  otherwise  honorable  and  up- 
right, can  think  themselves  justified  in  worming  their  way  into  Mormon  confi- 
dences, and  then  making  profit  one  way  or  another  by  revelations  to  the  public. 
But  one  naturally  and  unavoidably  hears,  in  Salt  Lake  City,  of  things  which  are 
deeply  significant  and  which  he  may  without  scruple  put  into  print.  For  exam- 
ple— there  was  a  terrible  pathos  to  my  mind  in  the  history  of  a  respectable  and 
intelligent  woman  who,  years  and  years  ago,  when  her  life,  now  fading,  was  in  its 
prime,  married  a  man  now  a  shining  light  of  Mormonism,  whose  photograph  you 
may  see  anywhere  in  Salt  Lake  City.  She  has  been  superseded  since  by  divers 
successive  wives  ;  she  is  now  striving  in  a  condition  far  worse  than  widowhood 
to  bring  up  her  seven  or  eight  children,  and  she  has  not  been  favored  with  even 
a  passing  call  for  more  than  a  year  and  a  half  by  the  husband  of  her  youth,  who 
lives  with  the  newest  of  his  wives  a  few  hundred  yards  away.  I  am  told  that 
such  things  are  perfectly  common  ;  that  the  result  of  the  system  is  to  plant  in 
Utah  a  number  of  families  which  may  be  described  practically  as  households 
without  husbands  and  fathers.  I  believe  the  lady  of  whom  I  have  just  spoken 
accepts  her  destiny  with  sad  and  firm  resignation.  Her  faith  in  the  religion  of 
Mormonism  is  unshaken,  and  she  regards  her  forlorn  and  widowed  life  as  the 
heaven-appointed  cross,  by  the  bearing  of  which  she  is  to  win  her  eternal  crown. 
Of  course  the  Indian  widows  regard  their  bed  of  flames,  the  Russian  women- 
fanatics  behold  their  mutilated  and  mangled  breasts  with  a  similar  enthusiasm 
of  hope  and  superstition.  But  none  the  less  ghastly  and  appalling  is  the  mon- 
strous faith  which  exacts  and  glorifies  such  unnatural  sacrifices.  These  dreary 
homes,  widowed  not  by  death,  seem  to  be  the  saddest,  most  shocking  birth  of 
Mormonism.  After  all,  this  is  not  the  polygamy  of  the  East,  bad  as  that  may 
be.  '•  Give  us,"  exclaimed  M.  Thiers  in  the  French  Chamber,  three  or  four 
years  ago,  when  Imperialism  had  reached  the  zenith  of  its  despotic  power — 
"give  us  liberty  as  in  Austria  !  "  So  1  can  well  imagine  one  of  these  superseded 


BRIGHAM  YOUNG.  105 

and  lonely  wives  in  Salt  Lake  City,  crying  aloud  in  the  bitterness  of  her  heart, 
"  Give  us  polygamy  as  in  Turkey  !  " 

That  the  thing  is  a  religion,  however  hideously  it  may  show,  I  do  not  doubt. 
I  mean  that  I  feel  no  doubt  that  the  great  majority  of  the  Mormon  men  are 
drawn  to  and  kept  in  Mormonism  by  a  belief  in  its  truth  and  vital  force  as  a  re- 
ligion.    I  do  not  believe  that  conscious  and  hypocritical  sensuality  is  the  leading 
impulse  in  making  them  or  keeping  them  members  of  the  Mormon  church.     I 
never  heard  of  any  community  where  a  sensual  man  found  any  difficulty  in  grat- 
ifying his  sensuality  ;    nor  are  the  vast  majority  of  the  Mormons  men  belonging 
to  a  class  on  whom  a  severe  public  opinion  would  bear  so  directly  that  they  must 
necessarily  wander  thousands  of  miles  away  across  the  desert  in  order  to  be  able 
comfortably  to  gratify  their  immoral  propensities.     To  me,  therefore,  the  possi- 
bility which  appears  most  dangerous  of  all  is  the  chance  of  any  sudden  crusade, 
legal  or  otherwise,  being  set  on  foot  against  this  perverted  and  unfortunate  peo- 
ple.    Left  to  itself,  I  firmly  believe  that  Mormonism  will  never  long  bear  the 
glare  of  daylight,  the  throng  of  witnesses,  the  intelligent  rivalry,  the  earnest  and 
active  criticism,  poured  in  and  forced  in  upon  it  by  the  Pacific  railroads.     But  if 
it  can  bear  all  this  then  it  can  bear  anything  whatever  which  human  ingenuity  or 
force  can  put  in  arms  against  it ;  and  it  will  run  its  course  and  have  its  day,  let 
the  Federal  Hercules  himself  do  what  he  may.     Meanwhile  it  would  be  well  to 
bear  in  mind  that  Mormonism  has  thus  far  cumbered  the  earth  for  comparatively 
a  very  few  years  ;    that  all  its  members  there  in  Utah  counted  together  would 
hardly  equal  the  population  of  a  respectable  street  in  London  ;  and  that  at  this 
moment  the  whole  concern  is  ricketty  and  shaky,  and  threatens  to  tumble  to 
pieces.     I  know  that  some  of  the  ruling  elders  are  panting  for  persecution  ;  that 
they  are  openly  doing  their  very  best  to  "  draw  fire ;  "  that  they  are  daily  endeav- 
oring to  work  on  the  fears  or  the  passions  of  Federal  officials  resident  at  Salt 
Lake  by  threats  of  terrible  deeds  to  be  done  in  the  event  of  any  attempt  being 
made  to  interfere  with  Mormonism.     Many  of  these  Mormon  apostles,  dull,  vul- 
gar and  clownish  as  they  seem,  have  foresight  enough  to  see  that  their  system 
sadly  needs  just  now  the  stimulus  of  a  little  persecution,  and  have  fanatical  courage 
enough  to  put  themselves  gladly  in  the  front  of  any  danger  for  the  sake  of  sowing 
by  their  martyrdom  the  seed  of  the  church.     "  That  man,"  said  William  the 
Third  of  England,  speaking  of  an  inveterate  conspirator  against  him  "  is  deter- 
mined to  be  made  a  victim,  and  I  am  determined  not  to  make  him  one."     I  hope 
the  United  States  will  deal  with  the  Mormons  in  a  similar  spirit.     At  the  same 
time,  I  would  ask  my  brothers  of  the  pen  whether  those  of  them  who  have  visited 
Salt  Lake  City  have  not  made  the  place  seem  a  good  deal  more  wonderful,  more 
alluringly  mysterious,  more  grandly  paradoxical  in  its  nature,  than  it  really  is  ? 
I  feel  convinced  that  if  people  in  Lancashire  and  Wales  and  Sweden  had  all  been 
made  distinctly  aware  that  Salt  Lake  City  is  only  a  dusty  or  muddy  little  com- 
monplace country  hamlet,  where  labor  is  not  less  hard  and  is  not  any  better  paid 
than  in  dozens  or  scores  of  small  hamlets  this  side  the  Missouri,  one  vast  tempta- 
tion to  emigrate  thither,  the  temptation  supplied  by  morbid  curiosity  and  igno- 
rant wonder,  would  never  have  had  any  conquering  power,  and  Mormonism  would 
have   oeen  deprived  of  many  thousand  votaries.     For,  regarded  in  an  artistic 
point  of  view,  the  City  of  the  Saints  is  a  vulgar  sham  ;  a  trumpery  humbug  ;  and 
I  verily  believe  that  it  has  swelled  into  importance  not  more  through  the  fanatical 
energy  of  its  governing  elders  and  the  ignorance  of  their  followers,  than  through 
the  extravagant  exaggeration  and  silly  wonder  of  most  of  its  hostile  visitors  and 
critics. 


THE  LIBERAL  TRIUMVIRATE  OF  ENGLAND. 


A  YEAR  ago  I  happened  to  be  talking  with  some  French  friends  at  a  din- 
ner-table in  Paris,  about  the  Reform  agitation  then  going  on  in  England. 
"  We  admire  your  great  orators  and  leaders,"  said  an  enthusiastic  French  gen- 
tleman ;  "your  Bright,  your  Beales  " — and  he  was  warming  to  the  subject  when 
he  saw  that  I  was  smiling,  and  he  at  once  pulled  up,  and  asked  me  earnestly 
whether  he  had  said  anything  ridiculous.  I  endeavored  to  explain  to  him  gently 
that  in  England  we  did  not  usually  place  our  Bright  and  our  Beales  on  exactly 
the  same  level — that  the  former  was  our  greatest  orator,  our  most  powerful 
.eader,  and  the  latter  a  respectable,  earnest  gentleman  of  warm  emotions  and 
ordinary  abilities  whom  chance  had  made  the  figure-head  of  a  passing  and  vehe- 
ment agitation,  and  who  would  probably  be  forgotten  the  day  after  to-morrow  or 
thereabouts. 

My  French  friend  did  not  seem  convinced.  He  had  seen  Mr.  Beales's 
name  in  the  London  papers  quite  as  often  and  as  prominently  for  some  months 
as  Mr.  Bright's  ;  and,  moreover,  he  had  met  Mr.  Beales  at  dinner,  and  did  not 
like  to  be  told  that  he  had  not  thereby  made  the  acquaintance  of  a  great  tribune 
of  the  British  people.  So  I  dropped  the  subject  and  allowed  our  Bright  and 
and  our  Beales  to  rank  together  without  farther  protest. 

Here  in  New  York,  where  English  politics  are  understood  infinitely  better 
than  in  Paris,  I  have  noticed  not  a  little  of  this  *'  Bright  and  Beales  "  classifica- 
tion when  people  talk  of  the  leaders  of  English  Liberalism.  I  have  heard,  with 
surprise,  this  or  that  respectable  member  of  Parliament,  who  never  for  a  moment 
dreamed  of  being  classed  among  the  chiefs  of  his  party,  exalted  to  a  place  of 
equality  with  Gladstone  or  Bright.  In  truth  the  English  Liberal  party  (I  mean 
now  the  advancing  and  popular  party — not  the  old  Whigs)  has  only  three  men 
who  can  be  called  leaders.  After  Gladstone,  Bright,  and  Mill  there  comes  a 
huge  gap — and  then  follow  the  subalterns,  of  whom  one  might  name  half  a  dozen 
having  about  equal  rank  and  influence,  and  of  whom  you  may  choose  any  favor- 
ite you  like.  Take,  for  example,  Mr.  W.  E.  Forster,  Mr.  Stansfeld,  Mr.  Thomas 
Hughes,  the  O'Donoghue,  Mr.  Coleridge  (who,  however,  is  marked  out  for  the 
judicial  bench,  and  therefore  need  hardly  be  counted),  and  one  or  two  others, 
and  you  have  the  captains  of  the  advanced  Liberal  party.  The  Liberals  are  not 
rich  in  rising  talent ;  at  least  there  seems  no  man  of  the  younger  political  gen- 
eration who  gives  any  promise  of  commanding  ability.  They  have  many  good 
debaters  and  clever  politicians,  but  I  see  no  "  pony  Gladstone  "  to  succeed  him 
who  used  to  be  called  the  "  pony  Peel  ;  "  and  the  man  has  yet  to  show  himself 
in  whom  the  House  of  Commons  can  hope  for  a  future  Bright.  The  great  Lib- 
erals of  our  day  have  apparently  not  the  gift  of  {raining  disciples  in  order  that 
the  latter  may  become  apostles  in  their  time.  Like  Cavour,  they  r\re  too  earnest 
about  the  work  and  do  too  much  of  it  themselves  to  have  leisure  or  inclination 
for  teaching  and  pushing  others. 

Officially  Mr.  Gladstone  has  been,  of  course,  for  several  years  the  leader  of 
the  party.  He  is  formally  invested  with  all  the  insignia  of  command.  He  is 
indeed  the  only  possible  leader  ;  for  he  is  the  only  man  who  has  the  slightest 
chance  just  now  of  commanding  the  allegiance  of  the  old  Whigs  with  their 
dukes  and  earls,  and  the  young  Radicals  with  their  philosophers,  their  Comtists, 


THE  LIBERAL  TRIUMVIRATE  OF  ENGLAND.  107 

their  Irish  Nationalists,  and  their  working  men.  But  the  true  soul  and  voice 
and  heart  of  the  Liberal  party  pay  silent  allegiance  to  John  Bright.  He  is,  by 
universal  acknowledgment,  the  maker  of  the  Reform  agitation  and  the  Reform 
Bill. 

Mr.  Disraeli  has  over  and  over  again  flung  in  the  face  of  Mr.  Gladstone  the 
fact  that  Bright,  and  not  he,  is  the  master  spirit  of  Radicalism.  Of  late  the 
Tories  have  taken  to  praising  and  courting  Bright  incessantly  and  ostentatious- 
.y,  and  contrasting  his  calm,  consistent  wisdom  with  Gladstone's  impetuosity 
and  fitfulness.  Of  course  both  Bright  and  Gladstone  thoroughly  understand 
the  meaning  of  this,  and  smile  at  it  and  despise  it.  The  obvious  purpose  is  to 
try  to  set  up  a  rivalry  between  the  two.  If  Gladstone's  authority  could  be  dam- 
aged that  would  be  quite  enough  ;  for  it  would  be  impossible  at  present  to  get 
the  Whig  dukes  and  earls  to  follow  Bright,  and  the  dethronement  of  Gladstone 
would  be  the  break-up  of  the  party.  The  trick  is  an  utter  failure.  Bright  is  sin- 
cerely and  generously  loyal  to  Gladstone,  and  is  a'  man  as  completely  devoid  of 
personal  vanity  or  self-seeking  as  he  is  of  fear.  No  personal  question  will  ever 
divide  these  two  men. 

Gladstone  is  beyond  doubt  the  most  fluent  and  brilliant  speaker  in  the  Eng- 
lish Parliament.  No  other  man  has  anything  like  his  inexhaustible  flow  and 
rush  of  varied  and  vivid  expression.  His  memory  is  as  surprising  as  his  fluency. 
Grattan  spoke  of  the  eloquence  of  Fox  as  "  rolling  in  resistless  as  the  waves  of 
the  Atlantic."  So  far  as  this  description  conveys  the  idea  of  a  vast  \  olume  of 
splendid  words  pouring  unceasingly  in,  it  may  be  applied  to  Gladstone.  A  lis- 
tener new  to  the  House  is  almost  certain  to  prefer  him  to  any  other  speaker 
there,  "nd  to  regard  him  as  the  greatest  English  orator  of  the  present  genera- 
tion. I  was  myself  for  a  long  time  completely  under  the  spell,  and  a  little  im- 
patient of  those  who  insisted  on  the  superiority  of  Bright.  But  when  one  be- 
comes accustomed  to  the  speaking  of  the  two  men  it  is  impossible  not  to  find 
the  fluency,  the  glitter,  the  impetuous  volubility,  the  involved  and  complicated 
sentences,  the  Latinized,  sesquipedalian  words  of  Gladstone  gradually  losing 
their  early  charm  and  influence,  just  as  the  pure  noble  Saxon,  the  unforced 
energy,  the  exquisite  simplicity,  the  perfect  "fusion  of  reason  and  passion" 
which  are  the  special  characteristics  of  Bright's  eloquence,  grow  more  and  more 
fascinating  and  commanding.  Perhaps  the  same  effect  may  be  found  to  arise 
from  a  study  or  a  contrast  (if  one  must  contrast  them)  between  the  political  char- 
acters of  the  two  men. 

It  is  a  somewhat  singular  fact  that  one  English  county  has  produced  the 
three  men  who  undoubtedly  rank  beyond  all  others  in  England  as  Parliamentary 
orators.  The  Earl  of  Derby,  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  Mr.  Bright  are  all  Lanca- 
shire men.  But  Gladstone  is  only  Lancashire  by  birth.  His  shrewd  old  Scotch 
father  came  to  Liverpool  from  across  the  Tweed,  and  made  his  money  and 
founded  his  family  in  the  great  port  of  the  Mersey.  The  Gladstones  had,  and 
have,  large  West  Indian  property ;  and  when  England  emancipated  her  slaves 
by  paying  off  the  planters,  the  Gladstones  came  in  for  no  small  share  of  the  na- 
tional purchase-money.  When  the  great  Liberal  orator  came  out  so  impetu- 
ously and  unluckily  with  his  celebrated  panegyric  on  Jefferson  Davis,  a  few 
years  ago,  some  people  shook  their  heads  and  remarked  that  the  old  planter 
spirit  does  not  quite  die  out  in  the  course  of  one  generation  ;  and  I  heard  bitter 
allusion  made  to  the  celebrated  declaration  flung  by  Cooke,  the  great  tragedian, 
in  the  face  of  an  indignant  theatre  in  Liverpool,  that  there  was  not  a  stone  in  the 
of  that  town  which  was  not  "  cemented  by  the  blood  of  Africans." 


108  THE  LIBERAL  TRIUMVIRATE  OF  ENGLAND. 

indeed,  Gladstone's  outburst  had  no  traditional,  or  hereditary,  or  other  such 
source.  It  came  straight  from  the  impulsive  heart  and  nature  of  the  speaker. 
His  strength  and  his  weakness  are  alike  illustrated  by  that  sudden,  indiscreet, 
unjustifiable,  and  repented  outburst.  Thus  he  every  now  and  then  disappoints 
his  friends  and  shakes  the  confidence  of  his  followers.  A  keen,  intellectual,  cyn- 
.cal  member  of  the  Liberal  party,  Mr.  Grant  Duff,  not  long  since  publicly  re- 
proached Mr.  Gladstone  with  this  trick  of  suddenly  "  turning  round  and  firing 
his  revolver  in  the  face  of  his  followers."  Certain  it  is  that  there  is  little  or  no 
enthusiasm  felt  toward  Gladstone  personally,  by  his  party.  Admirers  of  Mr. 
Disraeli  are  usually  devotees  of  the  man  himself.  Young  men,  especially,  de- 
light in  him  and  adore  him.  Mr.  Gladstone  is  followed  as  a  leader,  admired  as 
an  orator ;  but  I  have  heard  very  few  of  his  followers  ever  express  any  personal 
affection  or  enthusiasm  for  him  ;  but  it  is  quite  notorious  in  London  that  some 
of  his  adherents  can  hardly  control  their  dislike  of  him.  Mr.  Bright,  although 
a  man  of  somewhat  cold  and  reserved  demeanor,  and  occasionally  brusque  in 
manner,  is  popular  everywhere  in  the  House.  Mr.  Gladstone  is  not  personally 
popular  even  among  his  own  followers.  What  is  the  reason?  His  enemies  say 
that  he  has  a  bad  temper  and  an  unbending  intellectual  pride,  which  is  as  untrue 
as  if  they  were  to  say  he  had  a  hoarse  voice  and  a  stammer.  The  obscurest 
man  in  the  House  of  Commons  is  not  more  modest ;  and  there  is  nothing  unge- 
nial  in  his  manner  or  his  temper.  But  the  truth  is  that  people  cannot  rely  upon 
him,  or  think  they  cannot,  which,  so  far  as  they  are  concerned,  amounts  to  the 
same  thing.  His  strongest  passion  in  life — stronger  than  his  love  of  figures,  or 
of  Homer,  or  even  of  liberty — is  a  love  of  argument.  He  is  always  ready  to 
sacrifice  his  friend,  or  his  party,  or  even  his  cause,  to  his  argument.  Add  to 
this  that  he  has  a  conscience  so  sensitive  that  it  can  hardly  ever  find  any  cause 
or  deed  smooth  enough  to  be  wholly  satisfactory  ;  add,  moreover,  that  he  has  an 
eloquence  so  fluent  as  to  flow  literally  away  from  him,  or  with  him,  and  the  won- 
der will  be  how  such  a  man  ever  came  to  be  the  successful  leader  of  a  great 
party  at  all.  He  is  always  reconsidering  what  he  has  done,  always  penitent  for 
something  he  has  said,  always  turning  up  to-day  the  side  of  the  question  which 
everybody  supposed  was  finally  put  away  and  done  with  yesterday. 

You  can  read  all  this  in  his  face.  Furrowed  with  deep  and  rigid  lines,  it 
proclaims  a  certain  self-torturing  nature — the  nature  of  the  penitent,  self-exam- 
ining ascetic,  whose  heart  is  always  vexed  by  doubts  of  his  own  worth  and 
purity,  and  past  and  future.  Decidedly,  Gladstone  wants  force  of  character, 
and  force  of  intellect  as  well.  He  is  not  a  man  of  great  thought.  Every  such 
man  settles  a  question,  so  far  as  he  is  himself  concerned,  finally,  one  way  or  the 
other,  before  long ;-  sees  and  accepts  what  the  human  limitations  of  thinking 
are  ;  recognizes  the  necessity  of  being  done  with  mere  thinking  about  it,  and  so 
decides  and  is  free  to  act.  There  is  intellectual  weakness  in  Gladstone's  inter- 
minable consideration  and  reconsideration,  qualification  and  requalification  of 
every  subject  and  branch  of  a  subject.  But  there  is  also  a  strong,  genuine,  un- 
mingled  delight  in  mere  argument — perhaps  as  barren  a  delight  as  human  intel- 
lect can  yield  to. 

Last  year  there  were  three  Fenian  prisoners  lying  under  sentence  of  death  in 
Manchester.  Their  crime  was  such  as  undoubtedly  all  civil  governments  are 
accustomed  to  punish  by  death.  But  there  was  considerable  sympathy  for 
them,  partly  because  of  their  youth,  partly  because  the  deed  they  had  done 
— the  killing  of  a  policeman  in  order  to  rescue  a  political  conspirator — did  not 
seem  to  be  a  mere  base  and  malignant  murder.  Some  eminent  Liberals,  Mr. 


THE  LIBERAL  TRIUMVIRATE  OF  ENGLAND.  109 

Bright  among  the  rest,  endeavored  to  obtain  a  mitigation  of  the  sentence.  The 
Torv  Government  refused  ;  then  a  point  of  law  was  raised  on  their  behalf,  and 
argued  in  the  House  of  Commons.  The  point  was  new,  the  Tory  law  -officers, 
dull  men  at  the  best,  were  taken  by  surprise,  and  broke  down  in  reply.  Yet 
there  was  a  reply,  and  legally,  a  sufficient  one.  Mr.  Gladstone  saw  it ;  saw 
where  the  point  raised  was  defective,  and  how  it  might  be  disposed  of.  He 
sprang  to  his  feet,  pulled  the  Tory  law-officers  out  of  their  difficulty,  and  upset 
the  case  for  the  Fenians.  Now  this  must  have  seemed  to  a  conscientious  man 
quite  the  right  thing  to  do.  To  a  lover  of  argument  the  temptation  of  upsetting 
a  defective  plea  was  irresistible.  But  most  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  Irish  followers, 
on  whom  he  must  needs  rely,  were  surprised  and  angry,  and  even  some  of  his 
English  friends  thought  he  might  have  left  the  Tories  unaided  to  hang  their 
own  political  prisoners.  Gladstone's  conduct  was  eminently  characteristic.  No 
impartial  man  could  honestly  say  that  he  had  done  a  wrong  thing ;  but  no  one 
acquainted  with  political  life  could  feel  surprised  that  a  leader  who  habitually 
does  such  things,  is  almost  always  being  grumbled  at  by  one  or  other  section 
of  his  followers. 

There  is  an  obvious  lack  of  directness  as  well  as  of  robustness  in  the  whole 
intellectual  and  political  character  of  the  man.  I  think  it  was  Nathaniel  Haw- 
thorne who  said  of  General  McClellan  that  if  he  could  only  have  shut  one 
eye  he  might  have  gone  straight  into  Richmond  almost  at  any  time  during  his 
command  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac.  I  am  sure  if  Gladstone  would  only 
close  one  eye  now  and  then  he  might  lead  his  party  much  more  easily  to  splen- 
did victory.  •  With  all  his  great,  varied,  comprehensive  faculties,  he  is  not  a 
man  to  make  a  deep  mark  on  the  history  of  his  country.  He  has  to  be  driven 
on.  Somebody  must  stand  behind  him.  He  is  not  self-sufficing.  His  style  of 
eloquence  is  not  straightforward,  cleaving  its  way  like  an  arrow.  It  goes  round 
and  round  a  subject,  turning  it  up,  holding  it  to  the  light,  now  this  way,  now  that, 
examining  and  re-examining  it.  Even  his  reform  speeches  are  as  Disraeli  once 
said  very  happily  of  Lord  Palmerston,  rather  speeches  about  Reform  than  ora- 
tions on  behalf  of  it.  He  is  indeed  the  brilliant  Halifax  of  his  age — at  least  he 
is  a  complete  embodiment  of  Lord  Macaulay's  Halifax.  A  leader  with  so  many 
splendid  gifts  and  merits,  no  English  parlimentary  party  of  modern  times  has 
ever  had.  Taking  manner,  voice,  elocution  and  all  into  account,  as  is  but 
right  in  judging  of  a  speaker,  I  think  he  is  the  most  splendid  of  all  English 
orators.  Burke's  manner  and  accent  were  terribly  against  him  ;  Fox  was  full  of 
repetition,  and  often  stammered  and  stuttered  in  the  very  rush  and  tumult  of  his 
thoughts ;  Sheridan's  glitter  was  sometimes  tawdriness ;  both  the  Pitts  were 
given  to  pompousness  and  affectation ;  Bright  has  neither  the  silver  voice  nor 
the  varied  information  of  Gladstone  ;  Disraeli  I  do  not  rank  among  orators  at 
all.  Gladstone  has  none  of  the  special  defects  of  any  of  these  men,  yet  I  am 
tat  vlnced  that  Fox  was  a  greater  orator  than  Gladstone  ;  I  know  that  Bright 
is  ;  while  Burke's  speeches  are,  as  intellectual  studies,  incomparably  beyond 
anything  that  Gladstone  will  ever  bequeath  to  posterity ;  and  as  instruments  to 
an  end,  some  of  Disraeli's  speeches  have  been  more  effective  and  triumphant 
than  anything  ever  spoken  by  his  present  rival. 

In  brief,  Gladstone  is  not,  to  my  thinking,  a  great  orator ;  and  I  do  not  be- 
lieve he  is  a  great  statesman.  A  great  statesman,  I  presume,  is  tested  by  a 
crisis,  and  is  greatest  at  a  crisis.  Such  was  Chatham  ;  such  was  Washington  ; 
such  was  Napoleon  Bonaparte  ;  such  was  Cavour ;  such  is  Bismarck.  All  I 
have  seen  of  Gladstone  compels  me  to  believe  that  he  is  not  such  a  man.  He 


110  THE  LIBERAL  TRIUMVIRATE  OF  ENGLAND 

s  just  the  man  to  lead  the  Liberal  party  at  this  time  ;  but  I  should  despair  of 
the  triumph  of  that  party  for  the  present  generation,  if  there  were  rot  stronger 
and  simpler  minds  behind  his  to  keep  him  in  the  right  way,  to  drive  him  on — 
and,  above  all,  to  prevent  him  from  recoiling  after  he  has  made  an  effective  stride 
forward. 

One  of  the  great  questions  likely  to  arise  soon  in  English  political  discussion 
is  that  of  national  education.  On  educational  questions  I  fancy  Mr.  Gladstone 
is  rather  narrow-minded  and  old-fashioned  ;  taking  too  much  the  tone  and  view 
of  a  college  Don.  His  recent  severance  from  the  political  representation  of 
Oxford  may  have  done  something  to  release  his  mind  from  tradition  and  pedan- 
try ;  but  I  much  doubt  whether  he  will  not  be  found  sadly  wanting  when  a  seri- 
ous attempt  i%  made  to  revolutionize  the  principles  and  the  system  of  the  Eng- 
lish universities,  and  to  substitute  there  (I  quote  again  the  language  of  Grant 
Duff)  "  the  studies  of  men  for  the  studies  of  children."  Gladstone  is  a  devotee 
of  classical  study  ;  and  his  whole  nature  is  under  the  influence  of  aestheticism, 
or  of  what  is  commonly  called  "  sentiment."  The  sweet  and  genial  traditions 
of  the  past  have  immense  influence  over  him.  His  love  of  Greek  poetry  and  of 
Italian  art  follow  him  into  politics.  With  the  Teuton,  his  poetry  and  his 
politics  he  has  little  or  no  sympathy ;  and  I  think  the  question  to  be  decided 
shortly  as  regards  the  university  system  in  England  maybe  figuratively  described 
as  a  question  between  Classic  and  Teuton.  Gladstone  is  a  profound  Greek  and 
Latin  scholar — a  master  of  Italian,  a  connoisseur  of  Italian  art  ;  he  does  not,  I 
believe,  know  or  care  much  about  German  literature.  Accordingly,  he  was  a 
devoted  Philhellene  and  a  passionate  champion  of  Italian  independence  ;  while 
the  outbreak  of  the  recent  struggle  between  the  past  and  the  present  in  Germany 
found  him  indifferent,  and  probably  even  ignorant.  So  it  was  in  regard  to  the 
American  crisis  the  other  day.  He  knew  little  of  American  politics  and  national 
life  ;  and  the  whole  thing  was  a  bewilderment  and  a  surprise  to  him.  If  the 
Laocoon  had  been  the  work  of  a  New  England  artist  I  think  the  North  would 
have  found  at  once  a  warm  advocate  in  Mr.  Gladstone. 

Of  a  mould  utterly  different  is  John  Bright,  at  the  very  root  of  whose  charac- 
ter are  found  simplicity  and  straightforwardness.  By  simplicity  I  do  not  mean 
freedom  from  pretence  or  affectation  ;  for  no  man  can  be  more  thoroughly  un- 
affected and  sincere  than  Gladstone.  I  mean  that  purely  intellectual  attribute 
which  frees  the  judgment  from  the  influence  of  complex  emotions  ;  which  dis- 
tinguishes at  once  essentials  from  non-essentials  ;  which  sees  at  a  glance  the 
true  end  and  the  real  way  to  it,  and  can  go  directly  onward.  Men  supremely 
gifted  with  this  great  practical  quality  are  commonly  set  down  as  men  of  one 
idea.  In  this  sense,  undoubtedly,  John  Bright  is  a  man  of  one  idea ;  but  the 
phrase  does  not  justly  describe  him,  or  men  like  him,  who  are  peculiar  merely  in 
having  an  accurate  appreciation  of  what  I  may  call  political  perspective,  and 
thus  knowing  what  proportion  of  public  consideration  certain  objects  ought,  un- 
der certain  circumstances,  to  obtain. 

So  far  as  ideas  are  the  offspring  of  information,  Mr.  Bright  has  undoubtedly 
fewer  ideas  than  some  of  his  contemporaries.  He  is  not  a  profound  classical 
scholar  like  Gladstone  ;  he  has  had  nothing  like  the  varied  culture  of  Lowe ;  he 
makes,  of  course,  no  pretence  to  the  attainments  of  Mill,  who  is  at  once  a  master 
of  science,  of  classics,,  and  of  belles-lettres.  But  given  a  subject,  almost  any 
subject,  coming  at  all  within  the  domain  of  politics  or  economics,  and  time  to 
think  over  it,  and  he  is  much  more  likely  to  be  right  in  his  judgment  of  it  than 
any  of  the  three  men  I  have  named.  He  is  gifted  beyond  any  Englishman  now 


THE  LIBERAL  TRIUMVIRATE  OF  ENGLAND.  Ill 

.iving  with  the  rare  and  admirable  faculty  of  seeing  right  into  the  heart  of  a 
subject,  and  discerning  what  it  means  and  what  it  is  worth.  Nor  is  this  ever  a 
ucky  jump  at  a  conclusion.  Bright  never  gives  an  opinion  at  random  or  off- 
nand.  Some  new  policy  is  announced ;  some  new  subject  is  broached  in 
the  House  of  Commons  ;  and  Bright  sits  silent  and  listens.  Friends  and  follow- 
ers come  round  him  and  ask  him  what  he  thinks  of  it.  <;  Wait  until  to-morrow 
and  I  will  tell  you,"  is  almost  invariably,  in  whatever  form  of  words,  the  tenor  ot 
his  reply — and  to-morrow's  judgment  is  certain  to  be  right.  I  can  remember 
no  great  public  question  coming  up  in  England  for  the  past  dozen  years  in 
regard  to  which  Mr.  Bright's  deliberate  judgment  did  not  prove  itself  to  be 
just. 

This  quality  of  sagacious  judgment,  however  valuable  and  uncommon,  would 
*ot  of  itself  make  a  man  a  great  statesman  or  even  a  great  party  leader  ;  but  it 
is  only  one  of  many  remarkable  attributes  which  are  found  harmoniously  illus- 
trated in  the  character  of  Mr.  Bright.  I  do  not  mean,  however,  to  dwell  at  any 
length  here  on  the  place  John  Bright  holds  in  English  political  life  or  the  quali- 
ties which  have  won  him  that  place.  He  has  lately  been  the  subject  of  an  article 
in  this  magazine,  and  he  is  indeed  better  known  to  American  readers  than  any 
other  English  political  man  now  living.  One  or  two  observations  are  all  that 
just  now  seem  necessary  to  make. 

Men  who  have  not  heard  Bright  speak,  and  who  only  know  him  by  repute  as 
a  powerful  tribune  of  the  people,  a  demagogue  ("John  of  Bromwicham,"  Carlyle 
calls  him,  classing  him  with  John  of  Leyden),  are  naturally  apt  to  think  of  him 
as  an  impetuous,  passionate,  stormy  orator,  shaking  people's  souls  with  sound 
and  fury.  Almost  anybody  who  only  knew  the  two  men  vaguely  and  by  rumor, 
would  be  likely  to  assume  that  the  style  of  the  classical  Gladstone  was  stately, 
calm,  and  regular ;  that  of  the  popular  orator  and  democrat,  impetuous,  rugged,  and 
vehement.  Now,  the  great  characteristic  of  Gladstone,  after  his  fluency,  is  his 
impetuosity;  that  of  Bright  is  his  magnificent  composure  and  self-control.  In- 
tensity is  his  great  peculiarity.  He  never  foams  or  froths  or  bellows,  or  wildly 
gesticulates.  The  heat  of  his  oratorical  passion  is  a  white  heat  which  consumes 
without  flash  or  smoke  or  sputter.  Some  of  his  greatest  effects  have  been  pro- 
duced by  passages  of  pathetic  appeal,  of  irony,  or  of  invective,  which  were  de- 
livered with  a  calm  intensity  that  might  almost  have  seemed  coldness,  if  the  fire 
of  genius  and  of  eloquence  did  not  burn  beneath  it.  Another  remark  I  should 
make  is  that  Mr.  Bright  is  the  greatest  master  of  pure  Saxon  English  now 
speaking  the  English  language.  As  the  blind  commonly  have  their  sen^e  of 
sound  and  of  touch  intensified,  so  it  maybe  that  Mr.  Bright's  comparative  indif- 
ference to  classic  and  foreign  literature  has  tended  to  concentrate  all  his  atten- 
tion upon  the  culture  of  pure  English,  and  given  him  a  supreme  faculty  of 
appreciating  and  employing  it.  Certain  it  is  that  his  unvarying  choice  of  the 
very  best  Saxon  word  in  every  case  seems  to  come  from  an  instinct  which  is  in 
itself  something  like  genius. 

Finally,  let  me  remark,  that  the  extent  of  Mr.  Bright's  democratic  tenden- 
cies would  probably  disappoint  some  Americans.  I  may  say  now  what  I  should 
probably  have  been  laughed  at  for  saying  two  or  three  years  ago,  that  there  is  a 
good  deal  of  the  conservative  about  John  Bright ;  that  he  is  by  nature  disposed 
to  shrink  from  innovation  ;  that  change  for  the  mere  sake  of  change  is  quite  ab- 
horrent to  him  ;  and  that  he  is  about  the  last  man  in  England  who  would  care 
to  make  political  war  for  an  idea.  He  seems  to  me  to  be  the  only  one  English- 
man I  have  lately  spoken  with  who  retains  any  genuine  feeling  of  personal  loy- 


112  THE  LIBERAL  TRIUMVIRATE  OF  ENGLAND. 

alty  toward  the  sovereign  of  England.  But  for  his  eloquence  and  his  power,  I 
fancy  Mr.  Bright  would  seem  rather  a  slow  sort  of  politician  to  many  of  the 
vounger  Radicals.  The  "Times  "  lately  attributed  Mr.  Bright's  conservatism 
to  his  advancing  years.  This  was  merely  absurd.  Mr.  Bright  is  little  older 
now  than  O'Connell  was  when  he  began  his  Parliamentary  career.  He  is  con- 
siderably younger  than  Disraeli,  or  Gladstone,  or  Mill.  What  Bright  now  is  he 
always  was.  A  dozen  years  ago  he  was  defending  the  Queen  and  Prince  Albert 
against  the  attacks  of  Tories  and  of  some  Radicals.  He  never  was  a  Democr  xt 
in  the  French  or  Italian  sense.  He  has  always  been  wanting  even,  in  sympathys 
with  popular  revolution  abroad.  He  never  showed  the  slightest  interest  in  spec- 
ulative politics.  I  doubt  if  he  ever  talked  of  the  "brotherhood  of  peoples." 
He  has  been  driven  into  political  agitation  only  because,  like  Schiller's  Wilhelm 
Tell,  he  saw  positive,  practical,  and  pressing  grievances  bearing  down  upon  his 
neighbors,  which  he  felt  called  by  duty  to  make  war  against.  I  have  many 
times  heard  Mr.  Bright  say  that  he  detests  the  House  of  Commons,  and  would 
be  glad  if  it  were  permitted  him  never  to  mount  a  platform  again. 

But  if  Mr.  Bright  had  little  natural  inclination  for  a  Parliamentary  career, 
what  is  one  to  say  of  Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill's  natural  disinclination  for  such  a 
path  of  life  ? 

Physical  constitution,  intellectual  peculiarities,  temperament,  habits — all 
seemed  to  mark  out  Mr.  Mill  as  a  man  destined  to  close  his  career,  as  he  had  so 
long  conducted  it — in  almost  absolute  seclusion.  He  is  a  silent,  shy,  shrinking 
man,  of  feeble  frame  and  lonely  ways.  Until  the  general  election  of  three  years 
back,  Mr.  Mill  was  to  his  countrymen  but  as  an  oracle — as  a  voice — almost  as  a 
myth.  The  influence  of  his  writings  was  immense.  Personally  he  was  but  a 
name.  He  never  came  into  any  public  place  ;  he  knew  nobody.  When  the 
promoters  of  the  movement  to  return  him  to  Parliament  came  to  canvass  the 
Westminster  electors,  the  great  difficulty  they  had  to  contend  with  was,  that 
three  out  of  every  four  of  the  honest  traders  and  shopkeepers  had  never  heard 
of  him  ;  and  the  few  who  knew  anything  of  his  books  had  a  vague  impression 
that  the  author  was  dead  years  before.  The  very  men  who  formed  the  executive 
of  his  committee  could  not  say  that  they  knew  him,  even  by  sight.  Half  in  jest, 
half  for  a  serious  purpose,  some  of  the  Tories  sent  abroad  over  Westminster  an 
awful  report  that  there  was  no  such  man  in  existence  as  John  Stuart  Mill. 
"Did  you  ever  see  him?"  was  the  bewildering  question  constantly  put  to  this 
or  that  earnest  canvasser,  and  invariably  answered  with  an  apologetic  negative. 
I  believe  the  services  of  my  friend  Dr.  Chapman,  editor  of  the  "  Westminster 
Review,"  were  brought  into  pressing  requisition,  because  he  was  one  of  the  very 
few  who  really  could  boast  a  personal  acquaintance  with  Stuart  Mill.  The  day 
when  the  latter  first  entered  the  House  of  Commons  was  the  first  time  he  and 
Fright  ever  saw  each  other.  I  believe  Cobden  and  Mill  never  met.  Mill  had 
no  university  acquaintances — he  had  never  been  to  any  university.  He  had  no 
school  friends — he  had  never  been  to  a  school.  Perhaps  the  best  educated  man 
of  his  time  in  England,  he  owes  his  education  to  the  personal  care  and  teaching 
of  his  distinguished  father,  James  Mill,  who  would  have  been  illustrious  if  his 
son  had  not  overshadowed  his  fame.  Assuredly,  to  know  James  Mill  intimately 
was,  if  I  may  thus  apply  Leigh  Hunt's  saying,  in  itself  a  liberal  education. 
Following  his  father's  steps  at  the  India  House,  John  Mill  worked  there  me- 
thodically and  quietly,  until  he  rose  to  the  highest  position  his  father  had  occu- 
pied ;  and  then  he  resigned  his  office,  declined  an  offer  of  a  seat  at  the  Indian 
Council  Board,  subsequently  made  by  Lord  Stanley,  and  lapsed  wholly  into  pri- 


THE  LIBERAL  TRIUMVIRATE  OF  ENGLAND.  118 

vate  life.  Of  late  he  rarely  met  even  his  close  and  early  friends.  Some  es- 
trangement, not  necessary  to  dwell  on,  had  taken  place,  I  believe,  between  him 
and  his  old  friend  Thomas  Carlyle,  and  I  suppose  they  ceased  to  meet.  After 
the  death  of  the  wife  whom  he  so  loved  and  revered,  Mill  lived  almost  always  at 
Avignon,  in  the  south  of  France,  where  she  died,  and  where  he  raised  a  monu- 
ment over  her  remains,  which  he  visits  and  tends  with  a  romantic  devotion  and 
constancy  worthy  of  a  Roland. 

Only  a  profound  sense  of  duty  could  drag  such  a  man  from  his  scholarly  and 
sacred  seclusion  into  the  stress  and  storm  of  a  parliamentary  life.  But  it  was 
urged  upcM  Mill  that  he  could  do  good  to  the  popular  cause  by  going  into  Par- 
liament ;  and  he  is  not  a  man  to  think  anything  of  his  personal  preference  in 
such  a  case.  He  accepted  the  contest  and  won.  Some  of  his  warmest  admirers 
regretted  that  he  had  ever  given  his  consent.  They  feared  not  so  much  that  he 
might  damage  his  reputation  as  that  he  might  weaken  the  influence  of  his 
authority,  and  with  it  the  strength  of  every  great  popular  cause.  Certainly  those 
who  thought  thus,  and.who  met  Mr.  Mill  for  the  first  time  during  the  progress 
of  the  Westminester  contest,  did  not  feel  much  inclined  to  take  a  more  encourag- 
ing view  of  the  prospect. 

Mr.  Mill  seems  cut  out  by  nature  not  to  be  a  parliamentary  success.  He  has 
a  thin,  fragile,  awkward  frame  ;  he  has  a  nervous,  incessant  twitching  of  the 
lips  and  eyes  ;  he  has  a  weak  voice  and  a  sort  of  stammer ;  he  is  over  sixty 
years  of  age  ;  he  had  never,  so  far  as  I  know,  addressed  a  political  meeting  of 
any  kind  up  to  the  time  of  the  Westminster  contest.  Yet  with  all  these  disad- 
vantages, Mill  has,  as  a  political  leader  and  speaker,  been  an  undoubted  success 
with  the  country,  and  a  sort  of  success  in  the  House.  An  orator  of  any  kind  he 
never  could  be.  One  might  call  him  a  wretchedly  bad  speaker,  if  his  speaking 
were  not  so  utterly  unlike  anybody  else's,  as  to  refuse  to  be  classified  with  any 
other  speaking,  good  or  bad.  But,  so  far  as  the  best  selection  of  words,  the 
clearest  style,  the  most  coherent  and  convincing  argument  can  constitute  elo- 
quence, Mill's  speeches  are  eloquent.  They  are,  of  course,  only  spoken 
essays.  They  differ  in  no  wise  from  the  speaker's  writings  ;  and  I  need  hardly 
say  that  a  speech,  to  be  effective,  must  never  be  just  what  the  speaker  would 
have  written  if  it  were  to  be  consigned  at  once  to  print  as  a  letter  or  an  ess?y. 
As  speeches,  therefore,  Mr.  Mill's  utterances  in  the  House  have  little  or  no 
effect.  Indeed,  they  are  only  listened  to  by  a  very  few  men  of  real  intelligence 
and  judgment  on  both  sides.  Some  of  the  more  boisterous  of  the  Tories 
made  many  attempts  to  cough  and  laugh  Mill  into  silence  ;  indeed,  there  was  obvi- 
ously a  deliberate  plan  of  this  kind  in  operation  at  one  time.  But  Mill  is  a  man 
whom  nothing  can  deter  from  saying  or  doing  what  he  thinks  right.  A  more 
absolutely  fearless  being  does  not  exist.  He  is  even  free  from  that  fear 
which  has  sometimes  paralyzed  the  boldest-  spirits,  the  fear  of  becoming  ridicu- 
lous. So  the  Tory  trick  filled.  Mill  went  on  with  patient,  imperturbable, 
proud  good-humor,  despite  all  interruption — now  and  then  paying  off  his 
Tory  enemies  by  some  keen  contemptuous  epigram  or  sarcasm,  made  all  the 
more  pungent  by  the  thin,  bland  tone  in  which  it  was  uttered.  So  the  Tories 
gave  up  shouting,  groaning  and  laughing ;  the  more  quickly  because  one  at  least 
of  their  chiefs,  the  Marquis  of  Salisbury  (then  in  the  House  of  Commons  as 
Lord  Cranbourne)  had  the  spirit  and  sense  to  express  openly  and  loudly  his 
anger  and  disgust  at  the  vulgar  and  brutal  behaviour  of  some  of  his  followers. 
Therefore  Mr.  Mill  ceased  to  be  interrupted  ;  but  he  is  not  much  listened  to 
That  supreme,  irrefutable  evidence  that  a  man  fails  to  interest  the  House — the 


114  THE  LIBERAL  TRIUMVIRATE  OF  ENGLAND. 

fact  that  a  hum  and  buzz  of  conversation  may  be  heard  all  the  time  he  is  speaking 
— is  always  fatally  manifest  when  Mr.  Mill  addresses  the  Commons.  But  the 
House,  after  all,  is  only  a  platform  from  which  a  man  endeavors  to  speak  to  the 
country,  and  if  Mill  does  not  always  get  the  ear  of  the  House,  he  never  fails 
to  be  heard  by  the  nation.  I  have  no  doubt  that  even  the  Tory  members  of  the 
House  read  Mill's  speeches  when  they  appear  in  print;  assuredly  all  intelli- 
gent Tories  do.  These  speeches,  in  any  case,  are  never  lost  on  the  country. 
They  form  at  once  a  part  of  the  really  successful  literature  of  each  session. 
They  always  excite  controversy  of  some  kind — not  even  the  great  orations  of 
Br  ght  and  Gladstone  are  more  talked  of. 

So  far  they  are  a  success,  and  there  is  something  in  the  personal  character 
of  Mr.  Mill  himself,  which  makes  him  specially  popular  with  the  working  classes 
of  England.  I  doubt  if  there  is  now  any  Englishman  whose  name  would  be 
received  with  a  more  cordial  outburst  of  applause  at  a  popular  meeting.  Work- 
ing-men, in  fact,  are  very  proud  of  Mr.  Mill's  scholarship,  culture,  and  profundity. 
They  can  perceive  easily  enough  that  he  is  remarkable  for  just  those  intellec- 
tual qualities  which  the  conventional  demagogue  never  has.  Tory  newspapers 
and  the  "  Saturday  Review  "  sometimes  affect  to  regard  Mr.  Bright  as  a  man  of 
defective  education,  but  it  is  impossible  to  pretend  to  think  that  Mill  is  ignorant 
of  Greek  or  superficial  in  his  knowledge  of  history.  When  such  a  man  makes 
himself  especially  the  champion  of  working-men,  the  working-men  think  of  him 
very  much  as  the  Irish  peasants  of  '98  and  '48  did  of  Edward  Fitzgerald  and 
Smith  O'Brien,  the  aristocrats  of  birth  and  rank,  who  stepped  down  from  their 
high  places  and  gave  themselves  up  to  the  cause  of  the  unlettered  and  the  poor. 

There  is  something  fascinating,  moreover,  about  the  singular  blending' 
of  the  emotional,  and  even  the  romantic,  with  the  keen,  vigorous,  logical  intellect, 
which  is  to  be  observed  in  Mill.  Even  political  economy,  in  Mill's  mind,  is 
strangely  guided  and  governed  by  mere  feeling.  Somebody  said  he  was  a  com- 
bination of  Ricardo  and  Tom  Hughes — somebody  else  said,  rather  more  happily, 
I  think,  that  he  is  Adam  Smith  and  Fe"ne"lon  revived  and  rolled  into  one. 
The  "  Pall  Mall  Gazette  "  found  his  picture  well  painted  in  Lord  Macaulay's 
analysis  of  the  motives  which  influenced  Edmund  Burke,  when  he  flung  his 
soul  into  the  impeachment  of  Warren  Hastings.  The  mere  eccentricities,  the 
very  defects  of  such  a  nature  have  in  them  something  captivating.  The  admir- 
ers of  Mr.  Mill  are  therefore  not  unusually  somewhat  given  to  exalting  admira- 
tion into  idolatry.  The  classes  who  most  admire  him  are  the  scholarly  and 
adventurous  young  Radicals,  who  have  a  dash  of  Positivism  in  them  ;  the  ex- 
treme Radicals,  who  are  prepared  to  go  any  and  all  lengths  for  the  mere  sake 
of  change  ;  and  the  working-men. 

This  is  the  Triumvirate  of  the  English  Liberal  Party.  Combined  they  repre- 
sent, guide,  and  govern  every  section  and  fraction  of  that  party  that  is  worth 
taking  into 'any  consideration.  Mr.  Gladstone  represents  official  Liberalism; 
All  Bright  speaks  for  and  directs  the  old-fashioned,  robust,  popular  Liberalism 
of  which  Manchester  was  the  school  ;  Mr.  Mill  is  the  exponent  of  the  new  Lib- 
eralism,'the  Liberalism  of  Idea  and  Logic.  Bright's  programme  is  a  little  ahead 
of  Gladstone's,  hut  Gladstone  will  probably  be  easily  pulled  up  to  it.  Mill  goes 
far  beyond  ..either,  far  beyond  any  point  at  which  either  is  ever  likely  to  arrive. 
Indeed,  Mr.  Mill  may  be  fairly  described  by  a  phrase,  which  I  believe  is  Ger- 
man, as  a  man  in  advance  of  every  possible  future — at  least  in  England.  But 
he  is  quite  prepared  to  act  loyally  and  steadily  with  his  party  and  its  leader  on 
all  momentous  issues.  On  some  minor  questions  he  has  lately  gone  widely 


THE  LIBERAL  TRIUMVIRATE  OF  ENGLAND.  115 

away  fiom  them,  and  given  thereby  much  offence  ;  and  indeed  I  am  sure  there 
are  not  a  few  of  the  old-fashioned  Liberals  and  the  Manchester  men  who  would 
rather  Mr.  Mill  had  never  come  into  Parliament,  and  sat  at  their  side.  But  on 
nearly  all  questions  of  Parliamentary  Reform,  and  on  that  of  the  Irish  Church, 
Mill  and  his  Liberal  colleagues  will  pull  cordially  together.  So,  too,  on  most 
economic  questions,  reduction  of  taxation,  imposition  of  duties  and  the  like. 
Where  a  sharp  difference  is  likely  to  arise  will  only  be  in  relation  to  some  sub- 
ject having  an  idea  behind  it — some  question  of  foreign  policy  perhaps,  some- 
thing not  at  present  imminent ;  and,  let  us  hope,  not  destined  in  any  case  to  be 
vital  to  the  interests  of  the  party.  Only  where  an  idea  is  involved  will  Mr.  Mill 
refuse  to  allow  his  own  judgment  Jo  bend  to  the  general  necessities  of  the  party. 
It  was  his  objection  (a  very  unwise  one,  I  think)  to  the  idea  behind  the  system  of 
the  ballot,  which  led  him  to  separate  himself  sharply  from  Bright  and  other 
Liberals  on  that  subject ;  it  was  the  idea  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  a  represen- 
tation of  minorities,  which  beguiled  him  into  lending  his  advocacy  to  that  most 
chimerical,  awkward,  and  absurd  piece  of  political  mechanism  which  we  know 
in  England  as  the  three-cornered  constituency.  The  cohesion  of  Gladstone  and 
Bright  is  decidedly  more  close  and  likely  to  endure  than  that  between  Bright 
and  Mill.  But  on  all  immediate  questions  of  great  importance,  these  two  men 
are  sure  to  be  found  side  by  side.  Mill  has  a  deep  and  earnest  admiration  for 
Bright,  who  is  sometimes,  perhaps,  a  little  impatient  of  the  Politics  of  Idea. 

During  the  session  of  1868,  I  attended  a  meeting  of  a  few  representative 
Liberals  of  all  classes,  brought  together  to  decide  on  some  course  of  agitation 
with  regard  to  Ireland.  Mr.  Mill  was  there,  so  were  Professor  Fawcett.  Mr. 
Thomas  Hughes,  Lord  Amberley,  and  other  members  of  Parliament ;  Mr.  Fred- 
erick Harrison,  with  some  of  his  Positivist  colleagues,  and  several  representa- 
tive working  men.  Mr.  Bright  was  unable  to  attend.  A  certain  course  of  ac- 
tion being  recommended,  Mr.  Mill  expressed  his  own  approval  of  it,  but  em- 
phatically declared  that  he  considered  Mr.  Bright's  judgment  was  entitled  to  be 
regarded  as  authoritative,  and  that  should  Mr.  Bright  recommend  the  meeting 
not  to  go  on,  the  scheme  had  better  be  given  up.  Mr.  Bright  subsequently  dis- 
couraged the  scheme,  and  it  was,  on  Mr.  Mill's  recommendation,  at  once  aban- 
doned. I  mention  this  fact  to  illustrate  the  loyalty  which  Mr.  Mill,  with  all  his 
tendency  to  political  eccentricity,  usually  displays  toward  the  men  whom  he  re- 
gards as  the  leaders  of  the  party. 

Mill  and  Bright  are  alike  warm  admirers  of  Gladstone  and  believers  in  him. 
Indeed  one  sometimes  feels  ashamed  to  doubt  for  a  moment  the  steadfastness 
of  a  man  in  whom  Bright  and  Mill  put  so  full  a  faith. 

Certainly  the  English  Liberal  has  reason  to  congratulate  himself,  and  fee1 
proud  when  he  remembers  what  sort  of  men  his  party's  leaders  used  to  be,  and 
sees  what  men  they  are  to-day.  It  will  not  do  to  study  too  closely  the  private 
characters  of  the  chiefs  of  any  political  band  in  the  House  of  Commons,  from 
the  days  of  BolSngbroke  to  those  of  Fox.  The  man  who  was  not  a  sinecurist 
or  a  peculator  was  pretty  sure  to  be  a  profligate  or  a  gambler.  Not  a  few  emi- 
nent men  were  sinecurists,  peculators,  profligates,  and  gamblers.  The  political 
purity  of  the  English  Liberal  leaders  to-day  is  absolutely  without  the  faintest  shade 
of  suspicion — it  never  even  occurs  to  any  one  to  suspect  them,  while  their  pri- 
vate lives,  it  may  be  said  without  indelicacy,  are  in  pure  and  perfect  accord  with 
the  noble  principles  they  profess.  Not  often  has  there  been  a  political  trium- 
virate of  greater  men  ;  of  better  men,  never. 


THE    ENGLISH    POSITIVISTS. 


SOME  few  months  ago,  a  little  bubble  of  interest  was  made  on  the  surface 
of  London  life,  by  a  course  of  Sunday  lectures  of  a  peculiar  kind. 

These  lectures  were  given  in  a  small  room  in  Bouverie  street,  off  Fleet  street 
— Bouverie  street,  sacred  to  publishing  and  newspaper  offices — and  only  a  very 
small  stream  of  persons  was  drawn  to  the  place.  There  was  something  very 
peculiar,  however,  about  the  lectures,  the  lecturer,  and  the  audience,  which 
might  well  have  repaid  a  stranger  in  London  for  the  trouble  of  going  there.  I 
doubt  whether  such  a  proportion  of  intellectual  faces  could  have  been  seen  among 
the  congregation  of  any  London  church  on  these  Sunday  mornings  ;  and  I  know 
one.  at  least,  who  attended  the  lectures,  less  for  the  sake  of  what  he  heard  than 
because  such  listeners  as  the  authoress  of  "Romola"  were  among  the  audience. 
The  lecturer  was  Mr.  Richard  Congreve,  and  the  subject  of  his  discourses  was 
i\\fi  creed  of  Positivism. 

I  do  not  know  how  familiar  Mr.  Congreve  and  his  writings  and  his  doctrines 
are  to  the  American  public.  In  London,  Mr.  Congreve  is,  in  a  quiet  way,  a  sort 
of  celebrity  or  peculiarity.  He  is  the  head  of  the  small,  compact  band  of  English 
Positivists.  It  is  understood  that  he  goes  as  far  in  the  direction  of  the  creed 
which  was  the  dream  of  Auguste  Comte's  later  years  as  any  sane  human  creature 
can  well  go.  I  have,  however,  very  little  to  say  here  of  Mr.  Congreve,  individu- 
ally ;  and  I  take  his  recent  course  of  Sunday  lectures  only  as  a  convenient  start- 
ing point  from  which  to  begin  a  few  remarks  on  the  political  principles,  charac- 
ter, and  influence  of  that  small,  resolute,  aggressive  body  of  intellectual,  highly- 
educated  and  able  men  who  are  beginning  to  be  known  in  the  politics  and 
society  of  England  as  the  London  Positivists. 

A  discourse  on  the  principles  of  Positivism  would  be  quite  out  of  place  here  ; 
but  even  those  who  understand  the  whole  subject  will,  perhaps,  allow  me,  for  the 
benefit  of  those  who  do  not,  to  explain  very  briefly  what  an  English  Positivist 
is.  Positivism,  it  is  known  to  my  readers,  is  the  name  given  to  the  philosophy 
which  Auguste  Comte,  more  than  any  other  man,  helped  to  reduce  to  a  system. 
Regarded  as  a  philosophy  of  history  and  human  society,  its  grand  and  funda- 
mental doctrine  merely  is  that  human  life  evolves  itself  in  obedience  to  certain 
fixed  laws,  of  which  we  could  obtain  a  knowledge  if  only  we  applied  ourselves 
to  this  study  as  we  do  to  all  other  studies  in  practical  science,  by  the  patient 
observation  of  phenomena.  Auguste  Comte's  reduction  of  this  philosophical 
theory  to  a  scientific  system  is  undoubtedly  one  of  the  grandest  achievements 
of  human  intellect.  The  philosophy  did  not  begin  with  him  or  his  genera- 
tion, or,  indeed,  any  generation  of  which  we  have  authentic  record.  Whenever 
there  were  men  capable  of  thinking  at  all,  there  must  have  bee»  some  whose 
minds  were  instinct  with  this  doctrine  ;  but  Comte  made  it  a  system  at  once 
simple,  grand,  and  fascinating,  and  he  will  always  remain  identified  with  its  de- 
velopment, in  the  memory  of  the  modern  world.  Unfortunately,  Comte,  in  his 
later  years,  set  to  founding  a  religion  also — a  religion  which  has,  perhaps,  called 
down  upon  its  founder  and  its  followers  more  ridicule,  contempt,  and  discredit 
than  any  vagary  of  human  imagination  in  our  clay.  I  speak  of  all  this  only  to 
explain  to  my  readers  that  there  is  some  little  difficulty  in  defining  what  is  meant 
by  a  Positivist.  If  we  mean  merely  a  believer  in  the  philosophical  theory  of  his- 


THE  ENGLISH  POSITIVISTS.  H7 

* 

tory,  then  Positivists  are,  indeed,  to  be  named  as  legion,  and  their  captains  are 
among  the  greatest  intellects  of  the  world  to-day.  In  England,  we  regard  Mr.  John 
Stuart  Mill  as,  in  this  sense,  the  greatest  Positivist,  and  undoubtedly  he  is  so 
regarded  here.  But  Mill  utterly  rejects  and  ridicules  the  fantastic  religion 
which  Comte,  in  his  days  of  declining  mental  power,  sought  to  graft  on  his  grand 
philosophy.  In  his  treatise  on  Comte,  Mr.  Mill  showed  no  mercy  to  the  Positiv- 
ist religion,  and,  indeed,  bitterly  offended  many  of  its  votaries  by  his  contemptu- 
ous exposure  of  its  follies.  What  is  said  of  Mill  maybe  said  of  nineteen  out  of 
every  twenty,  at  least,  of  the  English  followers  of  Comte.  They  accept  the  phi- 
losophy as  grand,  scientific,  inexorable  truth  ;  they  reject  the  religion  with  pity 
or  with  scorn,  as  a  fantastic  and  barren  chimera.  Mr.  Congreve  is,  in  London, 
the  leader  of  the  small  school  who  go  for  taking  all  or  nothing,  and  to  whom 
Auguste  Comte  is  the  prophet  of  a  new  and  final  religion,  as  well  as  the  teacher 
of  a  new  philosophy.  Now  this  little  school  is  the  nucleus  of  the  body  of  Eng- 
lishmen of  whom  I  write. 

When  I  speak,  therefore,  of  English  Positivists,  I  do  not  mean  the  men  who  go 
no  farther  than  John  Stuart  Mill  does.  These  men  are  to  be  found  everywhere  ; 
they  are  of  all  schools,  and  all  religions.  I  mean  the  much  smaller  body  of 
votaries  who  go,  or  feel  inclined  to  go,  much  farther,  and  accept  Comte's  reli- 
gious teaching  as  a  law  of  life.  It  is  quite  probable  that,  even  among  the  men 
who  are  now  identified  more  or  less,  in  the  public  mind,  with  Mr.  Congreve  and 
his  school,  there  may  be  some  who  do  not  adopt,  or  even  concern  themselves 
about  the  religion  of  Positivism.  A  community  of  sentiment  on  historical  and 
political  questions,  the  habit  of  meeting  together,  consulting  together,  writing 
for  publication  together,  might  naturally  bring  into  the  group  men  who  may  not 
go  the  length  of  adopting  the  Comte  worship.  It  is  quite  possible,  therefore, 
that,  in  mentioning  the  names  of  English  Positivists,  I  may  happen  to  speak  of 
some  who  have  no  more  to  do  with  that  worship  than  I  have. 

I  mean,  then,  only  the  group  of  men,  most  of  whom  are  young,  most  of  whom 
are  highly  cultured,  many  of  whom  are  endowed  with  remarkable  ability,  who 
are  to  be  found  in  a  literary  and  political  phalanstery  with  Mr.  Congreve,  and 
of  whom  the  majority  are  understood  to  be  actual  votaries  of  the  religion  of 
Comte.  Of  course  I  have  nothing  to  do  here  with  their  faith  or  their  practices. 
If  they  adopt  the  worship  of  woman  I  think  they  do  a  better  thing  after  all  than 
the  increasing  and  popular  class  of  writers,  whose  principal  business  in  life  is 
to  persuade  us  that  our  wives  and  sisters  are  all  Messalinas  in  heart  and  nearly 
all  Messalinas  in  practice.  If,  when  they  pray,  they  touch  certain  cranial  bumps 
at  certain  passages  of  the  prayer,  I  do  not  see  that  they  institute  anything 
worse  than  the  genuflections  of  the  Ritualist  or  the  breast-beating  of  the  Roman 
Catholics.  If,  finally,  one  is  sometimes  a  little  puzzled  when  he  receives  a  letter 
from  a  Positivist  friend,  and  finds  it  dated  "5th  Marcus  Aurelius,"  or  "i  2th 
Auguste  Comte,"  instead  of  July  or  December,  as  the  case  may  be,  one  must  re- 
member that  there  never  yet  was  a  young  sect  which  did  not  delight  in  puzzling 
outsiders  by  a  new  and  peculiar  nomenclature.  I  never  heard  anything  worse 
charged  against  the  Positivists  than  that  they  worship  woman,  touch  their  fore- 
heads when  they  pray,  and  arrange  the  calendar  according  to  a  plan  of  their 
own  invention  ;  except,  of  course,  the  general  charge  of  Atheism  ;  but  as  that  is 
made  in  England  against  anybody  whom  all  his  neighbors  do  not  quite  under- 
stand, I  hardly  think  it  worth  discussing'  in  this  particular  instance.  We  are 
all  Atheists  in  England  in  the  estimation  of  our  neighbors,  whose  political 
opinions  are  different  from  our  own. 


118  THE  ENGLISH  POSITIVISTS. 

The  English  Positivists,  then,  are  beginning  to  stand  out  sharply  against  the 
common  background  of  political  life.  .  They  are  a  little  school ;  as  distinctly  a 
school  for  their  time  and  chances  as  the  Girondists  were,  or  the  Manchester 
school,  or  the  Massachusetts  Abolitionists,  or  the  Boston  Transcendentalists. 
They  are  Radical,  of  course,  but  their  Radicalism  has  a  curious  twist  in  it.  On 
any  given  question  of  Radicalism  they  go  as  far  as  any  practical  politician  does  ; 
but  then  they  also  go  in  most  cases  so  very  much  farther  that  they  often  alarm 
the  practical  politician  out  of  his  ordinary  composure.  They  are  generally  in- 
cisive of  speech,  aggressive  of  purpose,  defiant  of  political  prudery,  and  even 
of  political  orudence.  Their  politics  are  always  politics  of  idea. 

Some  three  or  four  years  ago  the  Positivists  published  a  large  and  ponder- 
ous volume  of  essays  on  subjects  of  international  policy.  Each  man  who  con- 
tributed an  essay  signed  his  name,  and  although  a  general  community  of  idea 
and  principle  pervaded  the  book,  it  was  not  understood  that  everybody  who 
wrote  necessarily  adopted  all  the  views  of  his  associates.  The  book,  in  fact, 
was  constructed  on  the  model  of  the  famous  "  Essays  and  Reviews  "  which  had 
sent  such  a  thrill  through  the  religious  world  a  few  years  before.  The  political 
essays  naturally  failed  to  create  anything  like  the  sensation  which  was  produced 
by  their  theological  predecessors  ;  but  they  did  excite  considerable  attention,  and 
awoke  the  echoes.  They  astonished  a  good  many  Liberal  politicians  of  the 
steady  old  school,  and  they  set  many  men  thinking.  What  surprised  people  at 
first  was  the  singular  combination  of  literary  culture  and  ultra-Radical  opinion. 
Literary  young  men  in  England,  of  late,  are  generally  to  be  divided  into  two 
classes — the  smart  writers  for  periodicals,  the  minor  novelists  and  dramatists,  and 
so  forth,  who  know  no  more  and  care  no  more  about  politics  than  ballet  girls 
do,  and  the  University  men,  the  men  of  "  culture,"  who  affect  Toryism  as  some- 
thing fine  and  distinguished,  and  profess  a  patrician  horror  of  democracy  and  the 
"  mob."  If  at  the  time  this  volume  was  published  one  had  taken  aside  some 
practical  politician  in  London  and  said,  "  Here  is  a  collection  of  practical  es- 
says written  by  a  cluster  of  young  men  who  all  have  University  degrees  after 
their  names — will  you  read  it?"  the  answer  would  certainly  have  been — "Not 
I,  it's  sure  to  be  some  contemptible  sham  Tory  rubbish  ;  some  '  blood-and-cul- 
ture '  trash  ;  some  schoolboy  impertinence  about  demagoguism  and  the  mob." 
Therefore  the  surprise  was  not  slight  to  such  men  when  they  read  the  book  and 
found  that  its  central  idea,  its  connecting  thread,  was  a  Radicalism  which  might 
well  be  called  thorough  ;  a  Radicalism  which  made  Bright  look  like  a  steady  old 
Conservative  ;  invited  Mill  to  push  his  ideas  a  little  farther ;  and  poured  scorn 
upon  the  Radical  press  for  its  slowness  and  its  timidity.  A  simple,  startling 
foreign  policy  was  prescribed  to  England.  Its  gospel,  after  all,  was  but  an  old 
one — so  old  that  it  had  been  forgotten  in  English  politics.  It  was  merely — Be 
just  and  fear  not.  Renounce  all  aggression  ;  give  back  the  spoils  of  conquest 
Give  Gibraltar  back  to  the  Spaniards  who  own  it ;  prepare  to  cast  loose  your 
colonial  dependencies  ;  prepare  even  to  quit  your  loved  India  ;  ask  the  Irish 
people  fairly  and  clearly  what  they  want,  and  if  they  desire  to  be  free  of  your 
rule,  bid  them  go  and  be  free  and  Godspeed.  All  the  old  traditional  policies 
seemed  to  these  men  only  obsolete  and  odious  superstitions.  They  would  have 
England,  the  State,  to-stand  up  and  act  precisely  as  an  Englishman  of  honor 
and  conscience  would  do,  and  they  treated  with  utter  contempt  any  policy  of 
expediency  or  any  policy  whatever  that  aimed  at  any  end  but  that  of  finding  out 
the  right  thing  to  do  and  then  doing  it  at  once  This  seemed  to  me,  studying 
the  school  quite  as  an  outside  observer,  its  one  great  central  idea ;  and  it  would 


THE  ENGLISH  FOSIT1VISTS.  ll'j 

of  course  be  impossible  not  to  honor  the  body  of  writers  who  proposed  to  show 
how  it  was  to  be  accomplished. 

But  no  school  lives  on  one  grand  idea  ;  and  this  school  had  its  chimeras  and 
crotchets — almost  its  crazes.  For  example,  the  leader  of  the  Positivist  band 
took  great  trouble  to  argue  that  Europe  ought  to  form  herself  into  a  noble  fed- 
eration of  States,  to  the  exclusion  of  Russia,  which  was  to  be  regarded  as  an 
Oriental,  barbarous,  unmanageable,  intolerable  sort  of  thing,  and  pushed  out  of 
the  European  system  altogether.  Then  a  good  many  of  the  leading  minds  of 
the  school  are  imbued  with  a  passionate  love  for  a  sort  of  celestial  despotism,  an 
ideal  imperialism  which  the  people  are  first  to  create  and  then  to  obey — which 
is  to  teach  them,  house  them,  keep  them  in  employment,  keep  them  in  health, 
and  leave  them  nothing  to  do  for  themselves,  while  yet  securing  to  them  the 
most  absolute  freedom.  To  some  of  these  men  the  condition  of  New  York, 
where  the  State  does  hardly  anything  for  the  individual,  would  seem  as  dis- 
tressing and  objectionable  as  that  of  despotic  Paris  or  even  Constantinople.  A 
distinguished  member  of  the  school  declared  that  nothing  was  to  him  more 
odious  than  any  manner  of  voluntaryism,  and  that  he  hoped  to  see  State  opera- 
tion introduced  into  every  department  of  English  social  organization.  The  con- 
nection of  this  theory  with  the  principle  of  Positivism,  which  would  mould  all 
men  into  a  sort  of  hierarchy,  is  natural  and  obvious  enough,  and  there  is,  to  sup- 
port it,  a  certain  reaction  now  in  England  against  the  voluntary  principle,  in 
education  and  in  public  charities.  But,  as  it  js  put  forward  and  argued  by  men 
of  the  school  I  describe,  iv  may  be  taken  as  one  of  the  most  remarkable  points 
of  departure  from  the  common  tendency  of  thought  in  England.  The  Positivists 
are  all,  indeed,  un-English,  in  the  common  use  of  a  phrase  which  is  ceasing  of 
late  to  be  so  dreaded  a  stigma  as  it  once  used  to  be  in  British  politics.  They 
are,  as  I  have  already  said,  a  somewhat  aggressive  body,  and  are  imbued  with  a 
contempt,  which  they  never  care  to  conceal,  for  the  average  public  opinion  of  the 
British  Philistine,  whether  he  present  himself  as  a  West  End  tradesman  or  a 
West  End  Peer. 

The  Positivists  are  almost  always  to  be  found  in  antagonism  with  this  sort  of 
public  opinion.  They  attack  the  Philistine,  and  they  attack  no  less  readily  the 
dainty  scholar  and  critic  who  lately  gave  the  Philistine  his  name,  and  whose 
over-refining  love  of  sweetness  and  light  is  so  terribly  offended  by  the  rough  and 
earnest  work  of  Radical  politics.  Whatever  way  average  opinion  tends,  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Positivists  is  sure  to  tend  the  other  way. 

There  was  a  time,  nearly  two  years  ago,  when  the  average  English  mind  was 
suddenly  seized  with  a  passion  of  blended  hate,  fear,  and  contempt  for  Feni- 
anism.  The  thing  was  first  beginning  to  show  itself  in  a  serious  light  and  it  had 
not  gone  far  enough  to  show  what  it  really  was.  It  looked  more  formidable  than 
it  proved  to  be,  and  it  seemed  less  like  an  ordinary  rebellious  organization  than 
like  some  mysterious  and  demoniacal  league  against  property  and  public 
security.  When  I  say  it  seemed,  I  mean  it  seemed  to  the  average  English  mind, 
to  the  ordinary  swell  and  the  ordinary  shopkeeper.  Just  at  this  time  the  Posi- 
tivists drew  up  a  petition  to  be  presented  to  the  House  of  Commons,  in  which 
they  called  upon  the  House  to  insist  that  lenity  should  be  shown  to  all  Fenian 
prisoners,  that  they  should  be  regarded  as  men  driven  into  rebellion  by  a  deep 
sense  of  injustice,  and  that  measures  should  be  taken  to  prevent  the  British 
troops  from  committing  such  excesses  in  Ireland  as  had  been  perpetrated  in  the 
suppression  of  the  Indian  mutiny,  and  more  lately  in  Jamaica,  Now,  if  there 
was  anything  peculiarly  calculated  to  vex  and  aggravate  the  House  of  Commons 


120  THE  ENGLISH  POSITIVISTS. 

and  the  English  public  generally,  it  was  such  a  view  of  the  business  as  this. 
Fenianism  had  not  acquired  the  solemn  and  tragic  interest  which  it  obtained  a 
few  months  afterward.  It  is  only  just  to  say  that  Englishmen  in  general  be- 
gan to  look  with  pity  and  a  sort  of  respect  on  Fenianism,  once  it  became  clear 
that  it  had  among  its  followers  men  who,  to  quote  the  language  of  one  of  the 
least  sympathetic  of  London  newspapers,  "knew  how  to  die."  But,  at  the  time 
I  speak  of,  Fenianism  was  a  vague,  mystic,  accursed  thing,  which  it  was  proper  to 
regard  as  utterly  detestable  and  contemptible.  Imagine  then  what  the  feeling 
of  the  English  county  member  must  have  been  when  he  learned  that  there 
were  actually  in  London  a  set  of  educated  Englishmen,  nearly  all  trained  in  the 
universities  and  nearly  all  moving  in  good  society,  who  regarded  the  Fenians 
just  as  he  himself  regarded  rebels  against  the  Emperor  of  Austria  or  the  Pope 
of  Rome,  and  who  not  merely  asked  that  consideration  should  be  shown  toward 
them,  but  went  on  to  talk  of  the  necessity  of  protecting  them  against  the  bru- 
tality of  the  loyal  British  soldier !  The  petition  was  signed  by  all  who  had  a 
share  in  its  preparation.  Such  men  as  Richard  Congreve,  T.  M.  Ludlow,  Fred- 
erick Harrison  and  Professor  Beesly,  were  among  the  petitioners  who  risked 
their  admission  into  respectable  society  by  signing  the  document.  The  petition- 
ers did  not  feel  quite  sure  about  getting  any  one  of  mark  to  present  their 
appeal ;  and  it  is  certain  that  a  good  many  professed  Liberals,  of  advanced 
opinions  and  full  of  sympathy  with  foreign  rebels  of  any  class  or  character, 
would  have  promptly  refused  to 4 accept  the  ungenial  office.  The  petitioners, 
however,  applied  to  one  who  was  not  likely  to  be  Influenced  by  any  considera- 
tions but  those  of  right  and  justice,  and  whom,  moreover,  no  body  in  the  House 
of  Commons  would  think  of  trying  to  put  down.  They  asked  Mr.  Bright  to  pre- 
sent their  petition,  and  there  was,  of  course,  no  hesitation  on  his  part.  Mr. 
Bright  not  merely  presented  the  petition,  but  read  it  amid  the  angry  and  impa- 
tient murmurs  of  an  amazed  and  indignant  House ;  and  he  declared,  in  tones  of 
measured  and  impressive  calmness,  that  he  entirely  approved  of  and  adopted  the 
sentiments  which  the  petitioners  expressed.  There  was,  of  course,  a  storm  of  in- 
dignation, and  some  members  went  the  length  of  recommending  that  the  petition 
should  not  even  be  received — an  extreme  and  indeed  extravagant  course  in  a 
country  where  the  right  of  petitiuon  is  supposed  to  be  held  sacred,  and  which 
the  good  sense  even  of  some  Tory  members  promptly  repudiated.  Mr.  Disraeli 
did  his  very  best  to  aggravate  the  feeling  of  the  House  against  the  petitioners. 
During  the  Indian  mutiny  he  had  himself  loudly  protested  against  the  spirit  of 
vengeance  which  our  press  encouraged  ;  asked  whether  we  meant  to  make 
Nana  Sahib  the  model  for  a  British  officer,  and  whether  Moloch  or  Christ  was 
our  divinity.  Yet  he  now  declared  that  the  language  of  the  petition  was  a  libel 
on  the  Indian  army,  and  that  nothing  had  ever  occurred  during  the  Bengal  cut- 
break  to  warrant  the  imputations  cast  on  the  humanity  of  our  soldiers. 

I  suppose  it  is  not  easy  to  convey  to  an  American  reader  a  correct  idea  of 
the  degree  of  boldness  involved  in  the  presentation  of  this  celebrated  petition. 
It  really  was  a  very  bold  thing  to  do.  It  was  running  right  in  the  very  teeth  of 
the  public  opinion  of  all  the  classes  which  are  called  respectable  in  England. 
It  was,  however,  strictly  characteristic  of  the  men  who  signed  it.  Most,  if  not 
all  of  them,  took  a  prominent  part  in  the  prosecution  of  Governor  Eyre  of  Ja- 
maica, foi  the  lawless  execution  of  George  William  Gordon  and  the  wholesale 
and  merciless  floggings  and  hangings  by  which  order  was  made  to  reign  in  the 
island.  Most  of  them,  indeed,  have  a  pretty  spirit  of  contradiction  of  their  own, 
and  a  pretty  gift  of  sarcasm.  I  think  I  hardly  remember  any  man  who  received, 


THE  ENGLISH  POSITIVISTS.  121 

during  an  equal  length  of  time,  a  greater  amount  of  abuse  from  the  press  than 
Professor  Beesly  drew  down  on  himself  not  very  long  ago.  It  was  at  the  time 
when  the  public  mind  was  in  its  wildest  thrill  of  horror  at  the  really  fearful  reve- 
lations of  organized  murder  in  connection  with  the  Sawgrinders'  Union  in  Shef- 
field. The  whole  question  of  trades'  union  organization  had  been  under  dis- 
cussion ;  and  even  before  the  Sheffield  revelations  came  out,  the  general  voice 
of  English  respectability  was  against  the  workmen's  societies  altogether.  But 
when  the  disclosures  of  organized  murder  in  connection  with  one  union  came 
out,  a  sort  of  panic  took  possession  of  the  public  mind.  The  first,  and  not  un- 
natural impulse  was  to  assume  that  all  trades'  unions  must  be  very  much  the 
same  sort  of  thing,  and  that  the  societies  of  workmen  were  little  better  than  or- 
ganized Thuggism.  Now.  Professor  Beesly,  Mr.  Frederick  Harrison  and  other 
signers  of  the  petition  for  the  Fenians,  had  long  been  prominent  and  influen- 
tial advocates  of  the  trades'  union  principle.  They  had  been  to  the  English 
artisan  something  like  what  the  Boston  Abolitionist  was  so  long  to  the  negro. 
The  trades'  union  bodies,  who  felt  aggrieved  at  the  unjust  suspicion  which  made 
them  a  party  to  hideous  crimes  they  abhorred,  began  to  hold  public  meetings  to 
repudiate  the  charge,  and  record  their  detestation  of  the  Sheffield  outrages. 
Professor  Beesly  attended  one  of  these  meetings  in  London.  He  made  a  speech, 
in  which  he  told  the  working  men  that  he  thought  enough  had  been  done  in  the 
way  of  disavowing  crimes  which  no  one  had  a  right  to  impute  to  them ;  that 
there  was  no  need  of  their  further  humiliating  themselves  ;  and  that  it  was  rath- 
er odd  the  English  Aristocracy  had  such  a  horror  of  murderers  among  the  poorer 
classes,  seeing  how  very  fond  they  were  of  men  like  Eyre,  of  Jamaica  !  In  fact, 
Professor  Beesly  uplifted  his  voice  very  honestly,  but  rather  recklessly  and  out 
of  time,  against  the  social  hypocrisy  which  is  the  stain  and  curse  of  London 
society,  and  which  is  never  so  happy  as  when  it  can  find  some  chance  of  de- 
nouncing sin  or  crime  among  Republicans,  or  Irishmen,  or  workingmen.  There 
was  nothing  Professor  Beesly  said  which  had  not  sense  and  truth  in  it ;  but  it 
might  have  been  said  more  discreetly  and  at  a  better  time  ;  and  it  was  said  with 
a  sarcastic  and  scornful  bitterness  which  is  one  of  the  characteristics  of  the 
speaker.  For  several  days  the  London  press  literally  raged  at  the  professor. 
"  Punch "  persevered  for  a  long  time  in  calling  him  "Professor  Beastly;"  a 
a  strong  effort  was  made  to  obtain  his  expulsion  from  the  college  in  which  he  has 
a  chair.  He  was  talked  of  and  written  of  as  if  he  were  the  advocate  and  the 
accomplice  of  assassins,  instead  of  being,  as  he  is,  an  honorable  gentleman  and 
an  enlightened  scholar,  whose  great  influence  over  the  working  classes  had  al- 
ways been  exerted  in  the  cause  of  peaceful  progress  and  good  order.  It  was  a 
common  thing,  for  days  and  weeks,  to  see  the  names  of  Broadhead  and  Beesly 
coupled  with  ostentatious  malignity  in  the  leading  columns  of  London  news- 
papers. 

1  give  these  random  illustrations  only  to  show  in  what  manner  the  school  of 
writers  and  thinkers  I  speak  of  usually  present  themselves  before  the  English 
public.  Now  Mr.  Harrison  devotes  himself  to  a  pertinacious,  powerful  series 
of  attacks  on  Eyre,  of  Jamaica,  at  a  time  when  that  personage  is  the  hero  and  pet 
martyr  of  English  society ;  now  Professor  Beesly  horrifies  British  respecta- 
bility by  pointing  out  that  there  are  respectable  murderers  who  are  quite  as  bad 
as  Broadhead  ;  now  Mr.  John  Morley  undertakes  even  to  criticise  the  Queen  ; 
now  Mr.  Congreve  assails  the  anonymous  writers  of  the  London  press  as  hired 
and  masked  assassins  ;  now  the  whole  band  unite  in  the  defence  of  Fenians. 
This  sort  of  thing  has  a  startling  effect  upon  the  steady  public  mind  of  England  ; 


122  THE  ENGLISH  POSIT; VISTS. 

and  it  is  thus,  and  not  otherwise,  that  the  public  mind  of  England  ever  comes 
to  hear  of  these  really  gifted  and  honest,  but  very  antagonistic  and  somewhat 
crochetty  men.  Several  of  them  are  brilliant  and  powerful  writers.  Professor 
Beesly  writes  with  a  keen,  caustic,  bitter  force  which  has  something  Parisian  in 
it.  I  know  of  no  writer  in  English  journalism  who  more  closely  resembles  in 
style  a  certain  type  of  the  literary  gladiator  of  French  controversy.  He  has 
much  of  Eugene  Pelletan  in  him,  and  something  of  Henri  Rochefort,  blended 
with  a  good  deal  that  reminds  one  of  Jules  Simon.  Frederick  Harrison  is  fast 
becoming  a  power  in  the  Radical  politics  and  literature  of  England.  John  Mor- 
ley  is  a  young  man  of  great  culture,  and  who  writes  with  a  quite  remarkable 
freshness  and  force.  I  could  mention  many  other  men  of  the  same  school  (I 
have  already  said  that  I  do  not  know  whether  each  and  every  one  of  these  is  or 
is  not  a  professed  Positivist)  who  would  be  distinguished  as  scholars  and  writers 
in  the  literature  of  any  country.  However  they  may  differ  on  minor  points, 
however  they  may  differ  in  ability,  in  experience,  in  discretion,  they  have  one 
peculiarity  in  common  :  they  are  to  be  found  foremost  in  every  liberal  and  radi- 
cal cause  ;  they  are  always  to  be  found  on  the  side  of  the  weak,  and  standing  up 
for  the  oppressed  ;  they  are  inveterate  enemies  of  cant ;  they  hate  vulgar  idola- 
try and  vulgar  idols.  Looking  back  a  few  years,  I  can  remember  that  almost, 
if  not  quite,  every  man  I  have  alluded  to  was  a  fearless  and  outspoken  advocate 
of  the  cause  of  the  North,  at  a  time  when  it  was  de  rigueur  among  men  of  "  cul- 
ture "  in  London  to  champion  the  cause  of  the  South.  Some  of  the  men  I  have 
named  were  indefatigable  workers  at  that  time  on  the  unfashionable  side.  They 
wrote  pamphlets  ;  they  wrote  leading  articles  ;  they  made  speeches  ;  they  deliv- 
ered lectures  in  out-of-the-way  quarters  to  workingmen  and  poor  men  of  all 
kinds  ;  they  hardly  came,  in  any  prominent  way,  before  the  public,  in  most  of  this 
work.  It  brought  them,  probably,  no  notoriety  or  recognition  whatever  on  this 
side  of  the  ocean ;  but  their  work  was  a  power  in  England.  I  feel  convinced 
that,  in  any  case,  the  English  workingmen  would  have  gone  right  on  such  a 
question  as  that  which  was  at  issue  between  North  and  South.  As  Mr.  Motley 
truly  said  in  his  address  to  the  New  York  Historical  Society,  the  workers  and 
the  thinkers  were  never  misled  ;  but  I  am  bound  to  say  that  the  admirable 
knowledge  of  the  realities  of  the  subject ;  the  clear,  quick,  and  penetrating  judg- 
ment, and  the  patient,  unswerving  hope  and  confidence  which  were  so  signally 
displayed  by  the  London  workingmen  from  first  to  last  of  that  great  struggle, 
were  in  no  slight  degree  the  result  of  the  teaching  and  the  labor  of  men  like 
Professor  Beesly  and  Frederick  Harrison. 

If  I  were  to  set  up  a  typical  Positivist,  in  order  to  make  my  American 
reader  more  readily  and  completely  familiar  with  the  picture  which  the  word 
calls  up  in  the  minds  of  Londoners,  I  should  do  it  in  the  following  way: 
1  should  exhibit  my  model  Positivist  as  a  man  still  young  for  anything  like 
prominence  in  English  public  life,  but  not  actually  young  in  years — say  thirty- 
eight  or  forty.  He  has  had  a  training  at  one  of  the  great  historical  Universi- 
ties, or  at  all  events  at  the  modern  and  popular  University  of  London.  He  is 
a  barrister,  but  does  not  practise  much,  and  has  probably  a  modest  competence 
on  which  he  can  live  without  working  for  the  sake  of  living,  and  can  indulge  his 
own  tastes  in  literature  and  politics.  He  has  immense  earnestness  and  great 
self-conceit.  He  has  an  utter  contempt  for  dull  men  and  timid  or  half-measure 
men,  and  he  scorns  Whigs  even  more  than  Tories.  He  devotes  much  of  his 
time  generously  and  patiently  to  the  political  and  other  instruction  of  working 
men.  He  writes  in  the  "  Fortnightly  Review,"  and  sometimes  in  "  MacMil- 


THE  ENGLISH  POS1T1V1STS.  123 

Ian,"  and  sometimes  in  the  "Westminster  Review."  He  plunges  into  gallant 
and  fearless  controversy  with  the  "  Pall  Mall  Gazette,"  and  he  is  not  easily 
worsted,  for  his  pen  is  sharp  and  his  ink  very  acrid.  Nevertheless,  is  any 
great  question  stirring,  with  a  serious  principle  or  a  deep  human  interest  at  the 
heart  of  it,  he  is  sure  to  be  found  on  the  right  side.  Where  the  controversy  is 
of  a  smaller  kind  and  admits  of  crotchet,  then  he  is  pretty  sure  to  bring  out  a 
crotchet  of  some  kind.  He  is  perpetually  giving  the  "  Saturday  Review"  an 
opportunity  to  ridicule  him  and  abuse  him,  and  he  does  not  care.  He  writes 
pamphlets  and  goes  to  immense  trouble  to  get  up  the  facts,  and  expense  to  give 
them  to  the  world,  and  he  never  grudges  trouble  or  money,  where  any  cause  or 
even  any  crotchet  is  to  be  served.  He  is  ready  to  stand  up  alone,  against  all  the 
world  if  needs  be,  for  his  opinions  or  his  friends.  Benevolent  schemes  which 
are  of  the  nature  of  mere  charity  he  never  concerns  himself  about.  I  never 
heard  of  him  on  a  platform  with  the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  and  I  fancy  he  has  a 
contempt  for  all  patronage  of  the  poor  or  projects  of  an  eleemosynary  character. 
He  is  for  giving  men  their  political  rights  and  educating  them — if  necessary 
compelling  them  to  be  educated ;  and  he  has  little  faith  in  any  other  way  of 
doing  good.  He  has,  of  course,  a  high  admiration  for  and  faith  in  Mr.  Mill. 
His  nature  is  not  quite  reverential — in  general  he  is  rather  inclined  to  sit  in 
the  chair  of  the  scorner ;  but  if  he  reverenced  any  living  man  it  would  be  MilL 
He  admires  the  manly,  noble  character  of  Bright,  and  his  calm,  strong  elo- 
quence. I  do  not  think  he  cares  much  about  Gladstone — I  rather  fancy  our 
Positivist  looks  upon  Gladstone  as  somewhat  weak  and  unsteady — and  with  him 
to  be  weak  is  'indeed  to  be  miserable.  Disraeli  is  to  him  an  object  of  entire 
scorn  and  detestation,  for  he  can  endure  no  one  who  has  not  deeply-rooted  prin- 
ciples of  some  kind.  He  has  a  crotchet  about  Russia,  a  theory  about  China  ;  he 
gets  quite  beside  himself  in  his  anger  over  the  anonymous  leading  articles  of 
the  London  press.  He  is  not  an  English  type  of  man  at  all,  in  the  present  and 
conventional  sense.  He  cares  not  a  rush  about  tradition,  and  mocks  at  the  wis- 
dom of  our  ancestors.  The  bare  fact  that  some  custom,  or  institution,  or  way 
of  thinking  has  been  sanctioned  and  hallowed  by  long  generations  of  usage,  is 
in  his  eyes  rather  ^prima  facie  reason  for  despising  it  than  otherwise.  He  is 
pitilessly  intolerant  of  all  superstitions — save  his  own — that  is  to  say,  he  is  in- 
tolerant in  words  and  logic  and  ridicule,  for  the  wildest  superstition  would  find 
him  its  defender,  if  it  once  came  to  be  practically  oppressed  or  even  threatened. 
He  is  "  ever  a  fighter,"  like  one  of  Browning's  heroes  ;  he  is  the  knight-errant, 
the  Quixote  of  modern  English  politics.  He  admires  George  Eliot  in  litera- 
ture, and,  I  should  say,  he  regards  Charles  Dickens  as  a  s6rt  of  person  who 
does  very  well  to  amuse  idlers  and  ignorant  people.  I  do  not  hear  of  his  going 
much  to  the  theatre,  and  it  is  a  doubt  to  me  if  he  has  yet  heard  of  the  "  Grande 
Duchesse."  Life  with  him  is  a  very  earnest  business,  and,  although  he  has  a 
pretty  gift  of  sarcasm,  which  he  uses  as  a  weapon  of  offence  against  his  enemies, 
I  cannot,  with  any  effort  of  imagination,  picture  him  to  myself  as  in  the  act  of 
making  a  joke. 

A  small  drawing-room  would  assuredly  hold  all  the  London  Positivists  who 
make  themselves  effective  in  English  politics.  Yet  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that 
Miey  are  becoming — that  they  have  already  become — a  power  which  no  one,  calcu- 
lating on  the  chances  of  any  coming  struggle,  can  afford  to  leave  out  of  his  con- 
sideration. Their  public  influence  thus  far  has  been  wholly  for  jrood ;  and  they 
set  up  no  propaganda  that  I  have  ever  seen  or  heard  of,  as  regards  either  phi- 
bsophy  or  religion.  The  course  of  lectures  I  have  already  mentioned  was  the 


124  THE  ENGLISH  POSITIVISTS. 

nearest  approach  to  any  public  diffusion  of  their  peculiar  doctrines  wh;.ch  I  can 
remember,  and  it  created  little  or  no  sensation  in  London.  Indeed,  little  or  no 
publicity  was  sought  for  it.  I  have  read  lately  somewhere  that  a  newspaper, 
specially  devoted  to  the  propagation  and  vindication  of  Positivism,  is  about  to 
be,  or  has  been  started  in  London.  I  do  not  know  whether  this  is  true  or  not ; 
but  for  any  such  journal  I  should  anticipate  a  very  small  circulation,  and  an  ex- 
istence only  to  be  maintained  by  continual  subsidy. 

So  quietly  have  these  men  hitherto  pursued  their  course,  whatever  it  may  be, 
in  religion  or  religious  philosophy,  that  it  was  long  indeed  before  any  idea  got 
abroad  that  the  cluster  of  highly-educated,  ultra-radical  thinkers,  who  were  to 
be  found  sharpshooting  on  the  side  of  every  great  human  principle  and  every 
oppressed  cause,  and  who  seemed  positively  to  delight  in  standing  up  against 
the  vulgar  rush  of  public  opinion,  were  anything  more  than  chance  associates, 
or  were  bound  by  any  tie  more  close  and  firm  than  that  of  general  political  sym- 
pathy. Even  now  that  people  are  beginning  to  know  them,  and  to  classify  them, 
in  a  vague  sort  of  way,  as  "those  Positivists,"  they  make  so  little  parade  of  any 
peculiarity  of  faith  that,  without  precise  and  personal  knowledge,  it  would  be 
rash  to  say  for  certain  that  this  or  that  member  of  the  group  is  or  is  not  an  actual 
professor  of  the  Comtist  religion.  I  read  a  few  days  ago,  in  one  of  the  few 
sensible  books  written  on  America  by  an  Englishman,  some  remarks  made  about 
a  peculiar  view  of  Europe's  duty  to  Egypt,  which  was  described  as  being  held  by 
"  the  Comtists."  I  do  not  know  whether  the  men  referred  to  hold  the  view 
ascribed  to  them  or  not ;  but,  assuredly,  if  they  do,  the  fact  has  no  more  direct 
connection  with  their  Comtism  than  Bright's  free-trade  views  have  with  Bright' s 
Quakerism.  An  illustration,  however,  will  serve  well  enough  as  an  example  of 
the  vague  and  careless  sort  of  way  in  which  doctrines  and  the  men  who  profess 
them  get  mixed  up  together  insolubly  in  the  public  mind.  The  Sultan  of  a  gen- 
eration back,  who  told  the  European  diplomatist  that  if  he  changed  his  religion 
at  all  he  would  become  a  Roman  Catholic,  because  he  observed  that  Roman 
Catholic  people  always  grew  the  best  wine,  was  not  more  unreasonable  in  his 
logic  than  many  well-informed  men  when  they  are  striving  to  connect  cause  and 
effect  in  dealing  with  the  religion  of  others. 

I  do  not  myself  make  any  attempt  to  explain  why  a  follower  of  Comte's  wor- 
ship should,  at  least  in  England,  be  always  on  the  side  of  liberty  and  equality 
and  human  progress.  Indeed,  if  inclined  to  discuss  such  a  question  at  all,  I 
should  rather  be  disposed  to  put  it  the  other  way  and  ask  how  it  happens  that 
men  so  enlightened  and  liberal  in  education  and  principles  should  yield  a  mo- 
ment's obedience  to  the  ghostly  shadow  of  Roman  Catholic  superstition,  which 
Auguste  Comte,  in  the  decaying  years  of  his  noble  intellect,  conjured  up  to  form 
a  new  religion.  But  I  am  quite  content  to  let  the  question  go  unanswered — and 
should  be  willing,  indeed,  to  leave  it  unasked.  I  wish  just  now  to  do  nothing 
more  than  to  direct  the  attention  of  American  readers  to  the  fact  that  a  new  set 
or  sect  has  arisen  to  influence  English  politics,  and  that  their  influence  and  its 
origin  are  different  from  anything  which,  judging  by  the  history  of  previous  gen- 
erations, one  might  naturally  have  been  led  to  expect.  "  Culture  "  in  England 
has,  of  late  years,  almost  invariably  ranked  itself  on  the  side  of  privilege.  The 
Oxford  undergraduate  shouts  himself  hoarse  in  cheering  for  Disraeli  and  groan- 
ing for  Bright.  Oxford  rejects  Gladstone  the  moment  he  becomes  a  Liberal. 
The  vigorous  Radicalism  of  Thorold  Rogers  costs  him  his  chair  as  pro- 
fessor of  political  economy,  although  no  man  in  England  is  a  more  per- 
fect master  of  some  of  the  more  important  branches  of  that  science.  The 


THE  ENGLISH   POSIT1VISTS.  125 

journals  which  are  started  for  the  sake  of  being  read  by  men  of  "cul- 
ture "  are  sure  to  throw  their  influence,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  into  the  cause 
of  privilege  and  class  ascendency.  The  "  Saturday  Review  "  does  this  deliber- 
ately ;  the  "  Pall  Mall  Gazette  "  does  it  instinctively.  Suddenly  there  comes  out 
from  the  bosom  of  the  universities  themselves  a  band  of  keen,  acute,  fearless 
gladiators,  who  throw  themselves  into  the  van  of  every  great  movement  which 
works  for  democracy,  equality  and  freedom.  They  invade  the  press  and  the 
platform  ;  they  write  in  this  journal  and  in  that ;  they  are  always  writing,  always 
printing ;  they  are  ready  for  any  assailant,  however  big,  they  are  willing  to  work 
with  any  ally,  however  small ;  they  shrink  from  no  logical  consequence  or  practi- 
cal inconvenience  of  any  argument  or  opinion  ;  they  take  the  working  man  by 
the  hand  and  talk  to  him  and  tell  him  all  they  know — and  it  is  something  worth 
studying,  the  fact  that  their  scholarship  and  his  no-scholarship  so  often  come  to 
the  same  conclusion.  They  will  work  with  anybody,  because  they  go  farther 
than  almost  anybody  ;  and  they  will  allow  anybody  the  full  swing  of  his  own 
crotchet,  even  though  he -be  not  so  willing  to  give  them  scope  enough  for  theirs. 
Thus  they  are  commonly  associated  with  Goldwin  Smith,  who  has  a  perfect  hor- 
ror of  French  Democracy  and  French  Imperialism,  and  who  sees  in  Mirabeau 
only  a  "  Voltairean  debauchee  ; "  with  Tom  Hughes,  who  is  a  sturdy  member  of 
the  Church  of  England,  and  does  not,  I  fancy,  care  three  straws  about  the  policy 
of  ideas  ;  with  Bright,  whose  somewhat  Puritanical  mind  draws  back  with  a  kind 
of  dread  from  anything  that  savors  of  free-thinking  ;  with  Auberon  Herbert,  the 
mild  young  aristocrat,  converted  from  Toryism  by  pure  sentimentalism  and 
philanthropy  ;  with  Connolly,  the  eloquent  Irish  plasterer,  whose  vigorous  stump 
oratory  aroused  the  warm  admiration  of  Louis  Blanc.  It  would  be  impossible 
that  such  a  knot  of  men,  so  gifted  and  so  fearless,  so  independent  and  so  unrest- 
ing, so  keen  of  pen,  and  so  unsparing  of  logic,  should  be  without  a  clear  and 
marked  influence  on  the  politics  of  England.  It  is  quite  a  curious  phenomenon 
that  such  a  group  of  men  should  be  found  in  close  and  constant  co-operation 
with  the  English  artisan,  his  trades'  union  organizations,  and  his  political  cause. 
Frederick  Harrison  represented  the  working  men  in  the  Parliamentary  commis- 
sion lately  held  to  inquire  into  the  whole  operation  of  the  trades'  unions.  Pro- 
fessor Beesly  writes  continually  in  the  "  Beehive,"  the  newspaper  which  is  the 
organ  of  George  Potter  and  the  trades'  societies.  I  cannot  see  how  the  cause 
of  Democracy  can  fail  to  derive  strength  and  help  from  this  sort  of  alliance,  and 
I  therefore  welcome  the  influence  upon  English  politics  of  the  little  group  of 
Positivist  penmen,  believing  that  it  will  have  a  deeper  reach  than  most  people 
now  imagine,  and  that  where  it  operates  effectively  at  all,  it  will  be  for  good. 


ENGLISH  TORYISM  AND  ITS  LEADERS. 

SIR  JOHN  MANDEVILLE  tells  a  story  of  a  man  who  set  out  on  a 
voyage  of  discovery,  and  sailing  on  and  on  in  a  westerly  direction,  at 
last  touched  a  land  where  he  was  surprised  to  find  a  climate  the  same  as  his 
own  ;  animals  like  those  he  had  left  behind  ;  men  and  women  not  only  having 
the  same  dress  and  complexion,  but  actually  speaking  the  same  language  as  the 
people  of  his  own  country.  He  was  so  struck  with  this  unexpected  and  won- 
derful discovery,  that  he  took  to  his  ship  again  without  delay,  and  sailed  back 
eastward  to  impart  to  his  own  people  the  news  that  in  a  far-off,  strange,  western 
sea  he  had  found  a  race  identical  with  themselves.  The  truth  was  that  the  sim- 
ple voyager  had  gone  round  the  world,  reached  his  own  country  without  recog- 
nizing it,  and  then  went  round  the  world  again  to  get  home. 

If  the  voyage  were  made  in  our  time,  and  the  explorer  were  a  British  Tory 
who  had  left  England  in  the  opening  of  the  year  1867,  and  after  unconsciously 
sailing  round  the  world  had  fallen  in  with  British  Tories  again  in  the  autumn  of 
the  same  year,  one  could  easily  excuse  his  failing  to  recognize  his  own  people. 
For  in  the  interval  of  time  from  February  to  August,  British  Toryism  underwent 
the  most  sudden  and  complete  transformation  known  outside  the  sphere  of 
Ovid's  Metamorphoses.  If  any  of  my  American  readers  will  try  to  imagine  a 
whole  political  party,  great  in  numbers,  greater  still  in  wealth,  station  and  influ- 
ence, suddenly  performing  just  such  a  turn-round  as  the  "  New  York  Herald  " 
accomplished  at  a  certain  early  crisis  of  the  late  civil  war,  he  will  have  some 
idea  of  the  marvellous  and  unprecedented  feat  which  was  executed  by  the  En- 
glish Tories,  when,  renouncing  all  their  time-honored  traditions,  watchwords 
and  principles,  they  changed  a  limited  and  oligarchical  franchise  into  household 
suffrage.  It  is  singular,  indeed,  that  such  a  thing  should  have  been  done.  It 
is  more  singular  still  that  it  should  have  been  done,  as  it  most  assuredly  was 
done,  in  order  that  one  man  should  be  kept  in  power.  It  is  even  more  singular 
yet  that  it  should  have  been  done  by  a  party  of  men  individually  high  principled, 
honorable,  unselfish,  incapable  of  any  deliberate  meanness — and  of  whom  many 
if  not  most  actually  disliked  and  distrusted  the  man  in  whose  interest  and  by 
whose  influence  the  surrender  of  principle  was  made. 

Perhaps  when  I  have  said  a  little  about  the  leadership  of  the  English  Tories, 
the  phenomenon  will  appear  less  wonderful  or  at  least  more  intelligible.  It  was 
not  a  mere  epigram  which  Mr.  Mill  uttered  when  he  described  the  Tories  as  the 
stupid  party.  An  average  Tory  really  is  a  stupid  man.  He  is  a  gentleman  in 
all  the  ordinary  acceptation  of  the  word.  He  has  been  to  Oxford  or  Cambridge  ; 
he  has  received  a  decent  classical  education  ;  he  has  travelled  along  the  beaten 
tracks — made  what  would  have  been  called  in  Mary  Wortley  Montague's  day 
"the  grand  tour;"  he  has  birth  and  high  breeding;  he  is  a  good  fellow,  with 
manly,  honorable  ways,  and  that  genial  consideration  for  the  feelings  of  others 
which  is  the  fundamental  condition,  the  vital  element  of  gentlemanly  breeding. 
But  he  is,  with  all  this,  stupid.  His  mind  is  narrow,  dull,  inflexible  ;  he  cannot 
connect  cause  with  effect,  or  see  that  a  change  is  coming,  or  why  it  should  come  ; 
with  him  post  hoc  always  means  propter  hoc;  he  cannot  account  for  Goodwin 
Sands  otherwise  than  because  of  Tenterden  steeple.  You  cannot  help  liking 
him,  and  sometimes  laughing  at  him.  It  may  seem  paradoxical,  but  I  at  least 


ENGLISH  TORYISM  AND  ITS  LEADERS.  127 

am  unable  to  get  out  of  my  mind  the  conviction  that  there  is  a  solid  basis  of 
stupidity  in  the  mind  of  the  great  Conservative  Chief,  Lord  Derby.  Let  me  ex- 
plain what  I  mean.  The  Earl  of  Derby  is  in  one  sense  a  highly  accomplished 
man.  He  is  a  good  classical  scholar,  and  can  make  a  speech  in  Latin.  He  has 
produced  some  very  spirited  translations  from  Horace  ;  and  I  like  his  version 
of  the  Iliad  better  on  the  whole  than  any  other  I  know.  He  is  a  splendid  de- 
bater— Macaulay  said  very  truly  that  with  Lord  Derby  the  science  of  debate 
was  an  instinct.  He  will  roll  out  resonant,  rotund,  verbose  sentences  by  the 
hour,  by  the  yard  ;  he  is  great  at  making  hits  and  points  ;  he  has  immense  power 
of  reply  and  repartee — of  a  certain  easy  and  obvious  kind  ;  his  voice  is  fine,  his 
manner  is  noble,  his  invective  is  powerful.  But  he  has  no  ideas.  The  light  he 
throws 'out  is  a  polarized  light.  He  adds  nothing  new  to  the  political  thought 
of  the  age.  I  have  heard  many  of  his  finest  speeches ;  and  I  can  remember 
that  they  were  then  very  telling,  in  a  Parliamentary  point  of  view ;  but  I  cannot 
remember  anything  he  said.  He  is  always  interpreting  into  eloquent  and  effec- 
tive words  the  commonplace  Philistine  notions,  the  hereditary  conventionalities 
of  his  party — and  nothing  more.  His  mind  is  not  open  to  new  impressions,  and 
he  is  not  able  to  appreciate  the  cause,  the  purpose  or  the  tendency  of  change. 
This  I  hold  to  be  the  essential  characteristic  of  stupidity ;  and  this  is  an  attri- 
bute of  Lord  Derby,  with  all  his  Greek,  his  Latin,  his  impetuous  rhetoric,  his 
debating  skill  and  his  audacious  blunders,  which  sometimes  almost  deceive 
one  into  thinking  him  a  man  of  genius.  Now  the  Earl  of  Derby  is  the  greatest 
Tory  living ;  and  if  I  have  fairly  described  the  highest  type  of  Tory,  one  can 
easily  form  some  conception  of  what  the  average  Tory  must  be.  Every  one 
likes  Lord  Derby,  and  I  fully  believe  it  to  be  the  fact  that  those  who  know  him 
best  like  him  best.  I  cannot  imagine  Lord  Derby  doing  a  mean  thing;  I  can- 
not imagine  him  haughty  to  a  poor  man,  or  patronizingly  offensive  to  a  timid  visi- 
tor of  humble  birth.  Look  at  Lord  Derby  through  the  wrong  end  of  the  intel- 
lectual telescope  and  you  have  the  average  British  Tory.  The  Tory's  knowl- 
edge is  confined  to  classics  and  field  sports — when  he  knows  anything.  Even 
Lord  Derby  has  been  guilty  of  the  most  flagrant  mistakes  in  geography  and 
modern  history.  People  are  never  tired  of  alluding  to  a  famous  blunder  of  his 
about  Tambov  in  Russia.  It  is  also  told  of  him  that  he  once  spoke  in  Parlia- 
ment of  Demerara  as  an  island ;  and  when  one  of  his  colleagues  afterward  re- 
monstrated with  him  on  the  mistake,  he  asked  with  ingenuousness  and  naivett 
"  How  on  earth  was  I  to  know  that  Demerara  was  not  an  island  ?  "  He  once, 
at  a  public  meeting,  spoke  of  himself  very  frankly  as  having  been  born  "in  the 
pre-scientific  period  " — the  period  but  too  recently  closed,  when  English  Universi- 
ties and  high  class  schools  troubled  themselves  only  about  Greek  and  Latin, 
and  thought  it  beneath  their  dignity  to  show  much  interest  in  such  vulgar,  prac- 
tical studies  as  chemistry  and  natural  history,  to  say  nothing  of  that  ungentle- 
manly  and  ungenerous  study,  the  science  of  political  economy.  The  average 
British  Tory  is  a  Lord  Derby  without  eloquence,  brains,  official  habits  and  po- 
litical experience. 

How,  then,  do  the  Tories  exist  as  a  party  ?  How  do  they  continue  to  be- 
lieve themselves  to  be  Tories,  and  speak  of  themselves  as  Tories,  when  they 
have  surrendered  all,  or  nearly  all,  the  great  principles  which  are  the  creed  and 
faith,  and  business  of  Toryism  ?  Because  they  have,  in  our  times,  never  had 
Tories  for  leaders.  A  man  is  not  a  Tory  merely  because  he  fights  the  Tory  bat- 
tles, any  more  than  a  captain  of  the  Irish  Brigade  was  a  Frenchman  because  he 
fought  for  King  Louis,  or  Hobart  Pasha  is  a  Turk  because  he  commands  the 


128  ENGLISH  TORYISM  AND  ITS  LEADERS. 

Ottoman  navy.  The  Tory  party  has  always,  of  late  years,  had  to  call  in  the  aid 
of  brilliant  outsiders,  political  renegades,  refugees  from  broken-down  agitations, 
disappointed  and  cynical  deserters  from  the  Liberal  camp,  or  mere  adventurers, 
to  fight  their  battles  for  them.  It  used  to  be  quite  a  curious  sight,  some  three 
or  four  years  ago,  when  the  Tories  were,  as  they  are  now  again,  in  opposition, 
to  look  clown  from  the  gallery  of  the  House  of  Commons  and  see  the  men  who 
did  gladiatorial  duty  for  the  party.  Along  the  back  benches,  above  and  below  the 
"gangway,"  were  stretched  out  huge  at  length  the  stalwart,  handsome,  manly 
country  gentlemen,  the  bone  and  sinew  of  the  Tory  party — the  only  real  Tories 
to  be  found  in  the  House.  But  they  did  not  bear  the  brunt  of  debate.  They 
could  cheer  splendidly,  and  vote  in  platoons  ;  but  you  don't  suppose  they  were 
just  the  sort  of  men  to  confront  Gladstone,  and  reply  to  Bright?  Not  they; 
and  they  knew  it.  There  sat  Disraeli,  the  brilliant  renegade  from  Radicalism, 
who  was  ready  to  think  for  them  and  talk  for  them  :  and  who  were  his  lieuten- 
ants ?  Cairns,  the  successful,  adroit,  eloquent  lawyer,  a  North  of  Ireland  man, 
with  about  as  much  of  the  genuine  British  Tory  in  him  as  there  is  in  Disraeli 
himself;  Seymour  Fitzgerald,  the  clever,  pushing  Irishman,  also  a  lawyer; 
Whiteside,  the  voluble,  eloquent,  rather  boisterous  advocate,  also  a  lawyer,  and 
also  an  Irishman  ;  smart,  saucy  Pope  Hennessy,  a  young  Irish  adventurer,  who 
had  taken  up  with  Toryism  and  ultramontanism  as  the  best  way  of  making  a 
career,  and  who  would,  at  the  slightest  hint  from  his  chief,  have  risen,  utterly 
ignorant  of  the  subject  under  debate,  and  challenged  Gladstone's  finance  or 
Roundel  Palmer's  law.  These  men,  and  such  men — these  and  no  others — did 
the  debating  and  the  fighting  for  the  great  Tory  party  of  England  at  a  most 
critical  period  of  that  party's  existence.  Needless  to  say  that  the  party  who 
\rere  compelled  by  their  own  poverty  of  idea,  their  own  stupidity,  to  have  these 
men  for  their  representatives,  were  stupid  enough  to  be  led  anywhere  and  into 
anything  by  the  force  of  a  little  dexterity  and  daring  on  the  part  of  the  one  man 
into  whose  hands  they  had  confided  their  destinies. 

In  speaking,  therefore,  of  the  leaders  of  Toryism,  I  must  distinctly  say  that  I 
am  not  speaking  of  Tories.  The  rank  and  file  are  Tories  ;  the  general  and  offi- 
cers belong  to  another  race.  Mr.  Disraeli  is  so  well  known  on  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic  that  I  need  not  occupy  much  time  or  space  in  describing  him.  He  is 
the  most  brilliant  specimen  of  the  adventurer  or  political  soldier  of  fortune 
known  to  English  public  life  in  our  days.  I  do  not  suppose  anybody  believes 
Mr.  Disraeli's  Toryism  to  be  a  genuine  faith.  This  is  not  merely  because  he 
has  changed  his  opinions  so  completely  since  the  time  when  he  came  out  as  a 
Radical,  under  the  patronage  of  O'Connell,  and  wrote  to  William  Johnson  Fox, 
the  Democratic  orator,  a  famous  letter,  in  which  he,  Disraeli,  boasted  that  "his 
forte  was  revolution."  Men  ha"ve  changed  their  views  as  completely,  and  even  as 
suddenly,  and  yet  obtained  credit  for  sincerity  and  integrity.  It  is  not  even  be- 
cause, in  all  of  Mr.  Disraeli's  novels,  a  prime  and  favorite  personage  is  a  daring 
political  adventurer,  who  carries  all  before  him  by  the  audacity  of  his  genius  and 
his  unscrupulousness  ;  it  is  not  even  that  Mr.  Disraeli,  in  private  life,  frequently 
speaks  of  success  in  politics  as  the  one  grand  object  worth  striving  for  or  living 
for.  "  What  do  you  and  I  come  to  this  House  of  Commons  night  after  night 
for?"  said  Mr.  Disraeli  once  to  a  great  Englishman,  and  when  the  latter  failed 
to  reply  very  quickly,  he  answered  his  own  question  by  saying,  "  You  know  we 
come  here  for  fame."  The  man  to  whom  he  spoke  declared,  in  all  truthfulness, 
that  he  did  not  follow  a  political  career  for  the  sake  of  fame.  But  Disraeli  was 
quite  incredulous,  and  probably  could  not,  by  any  earnestness  and  apparent 


ENGLISH  TORYISM  AND   ITS   LEADERS.  129 

sincerity  of  asseveration,  be  got  to  believe  that  there  lives  a  being  who  could 
sacrifice  time,  and  money,  and  intellect,  and  eloquence  merely  for  the  sake  of 
serving  the  public.  Yet  it  is  not  alone  this  cynical  avowal  of  selfishness  which 
makes  people  so  profoundly  sceptical  as  to  Mr.  Disraeli's  Toryism.  It  is  the 
fact  that  he  always  escapes  into  Liberalism  whenever  he  has  an  opportunity ; 
that  he  lives  by  hawking  Toryism,  not  by  imbibing  it  himself;  that  he  is  ready 
to  sell  it,  or  betray  it,  or  drag  it  in  the  dirt  whenever  he  can  safely  serve  him- 
self by  doing  so  ;  that  he  can  become  the  most  ardent  of  Freetraders,  the  most 
uncompromising  champion  of  a  Popular  Suffrage  to-day,  when  it  is  for  his  inter- 
est, after  having  fought  fiercely  against  both  yesterday,  when  to  fight  against 
them  was  for  his  interest.  Mr.  Disraeli  is  decidedly  a  man  without  scruple. 
Those  who  have  read  his  "Vivian  Grey"  will  remember  with  what  zest  and  unc- 
tion he  describes  his  hero  bewildering  a  company  and  dumbfoundering  a  scien- 
tific authority  by  extemporizing  an  imaginary  quotation  from  a  book  which  he 
holds  in  his  hand,  and  from  which  he  pretends  to  read  the  passage  he  is  reciting. 
It  is  not  long  since  Mr.  Disraeli  himself  publicly  ventured  on  a  bold  little  ex- 
periment of  a  somewhat  similar  kind.  The  story  is  curious,  and  worth  hearing ; 
and  it  is  certain  that  it  cannot  be  contradicted. 

Three  or  four  years  ago,  a  bitter  factious  attack  was  made  in  the  House  of 
Common;  upon  Mr.  Stansfeld,  then  holding  office  in  the  Liberal  government, 
because  of  his  open  and  avowed  friendship  for,  and  intimacy  with  Mazzini. 
This  was  at  a  time  when  the  French  government  were  endeavoring  to  connect 
Mazzini  with  a  plot  to  assassinate  the  Emperor  Napoleon.  Mr.  Disraeli  was 
\rery  stern  in  his  condemnation  of  Mr.  Stansfeld  for  his  friendship  with  one  who, 
twenty  odd  years  before,  had  encouraged  a  young  enthusiast  (as  the  enthusiast 
said)  in  a  design  to  kill  Charles  Albert,  King  of  Sardinia.  Mr.  Bright,  in  a  mod- 
erate and  kindly  speech,  deprecated  the  idea  of  making  unpardonable  crimes  out 
of  the  hotheaded  follies  of  enthusiastic  men  in  their  young  days  ;  and  he  added 
that  he  believed  there  would  be  found  in  a  certain  poem,  written  by  Disraeli  him- 
self some  twenty-five  or  thirty  years  before,  and  called  "  A  Revolutionary  Epick," 
some  lines  of  eloquent  apostrophe  in  praise  of  tyrannicide.  Up  sprang  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli, indignant  and-  excited,  and  vehemently  denied  that  any  such  sentiment,  any- 
such  line,  could  be  found  in  the  poem.  Mr.  Bright  at  once  accepted  the  assur- 
ance ;  said  he  had  never  seen  the  poem  himself,  but  only  heard  that  there  was 
such  a  passage  in  it ;  apologized  for  the  mistake — and  there  most  people  thought 
the  matter  would  have  ended.  In  truth,  the  volume  which  Mr.  Disraeli  had  pub- 
lished a  generation  before,  with  the  grandiloquent  title,  "  A  Revolutionary  Ep- 
ick "  (not  "  epic,"  in  the  common  way,  but  dignified,  old-fashioned  "  epick "), 
was  a  piece  of  youthful,  bombastic  folly  long  out  of  print,  and  almost  wholly  for- 
gotten. But  Disraeli  chose  to  attach  great  importance  to  the  charge  he  supposed 
to  be  made  against  him  ;  and  he  declared  that  he  felt  himself  bound  to  refute  it 
utterly  by  more  than  a  mere  denial.  Accordingly,  in  a  few  weeks,  there  came 
out  a  new  edition  of  the  Epick,  with  a  dedication  to  Lord  Stanley,  and  a  preface 
explaining  that,  as  the  first  edition  was  out  of  print,  and  as  a  charge  founded  on 
a  passage  in  it  had  been  made  against  the  author,  said  author  felt  bound  to  issue 
this  new  edition,  that  all  the  world  might  see  how  unfounded  was  the  accusation. 
Sure  enough,  the  publication  did  seem  to  dispose  of  the  charge  effectually. 
There  was  only  one  passage  which  in  any  way  bore  on  the  subject  of  tyrannicide, 
and  that  certainly  did  not  express  approval.  What  could  be  more  satisfactory  ? 
Unluckily,  however,  the  gentleman  on  whose  hint  Mr.  Bright  spoke,  happened 
to  possess  one  copy  of  the  original  edition.  He  compared  this,  to  make  assur- 


130  ENGLISH  TORYISM  AND  ITS  LEADERS. 

ance  doubly  sure,  with  the  copy  at  the  British  Museum,  the  only  other  copy 
accessible  to  him,  and  he  found  that  the  passage  which  contained  the  praise  of 
tyrannicide  had  been  partly  altered,  partly  suppressed,  in  the  new  edition  specially 
issued  by  Mr.  Disraeli,  in  order  to  prove  to  the  world  that  he  had  not  written  a 
line  in  the  poem  to  imply  that  he  sanctioned  the  slaying  of  a  tyrant.  Now,  this 
was  a  small  and  trifling  affair  ;  but  just  see  how  significant  arid  characteristic  it 
was  !  It  surely  did  not  make  much  matter  whether  Mr.  Disraeli,  in  his  young, 
nonsensical  days,  had  or  had  not  indulged  in  a  burst  of  enthusiasm  about  the 
slaying  of  tyrants,  in  a  poem  so  bombastical  that  no  rational  man  could  think  of 
it  with  any  seriousness.  But  Mr.  Disraeli  .chose  to  regard  his  reputation  as 
seriously  assailed;  and  what  did  he  do  to  vindicate  himself?  He  published  a 
new  edition,  which  he  trumpeted  as  not  merely  authentic,, but  as  issued  for  the 
sole  purpose  of  proving  that  he  had  not  praised  tyrannicide,  and  he  deliberately 
excised  the  lines  which  contained  the  passage  in  question !  The  controversy 
turned  on  some  two  lines  and  a  half;  and  of  these  Mr.  Disraeli  cut  out  all  the 
dangerous  words  and  gave  the  garbled  version  to  the  world  as  his  authoritative 
reply  to  the  charge  made  against  him  !  This,  too,  after  the  famous  "annexation  " 
of  one  of  Thiers's  speeches,  and  the  delivery  of  it  as  a  panegyric  on  the  memory 
of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  and  after  the  appropriation  of  a  page  or  two  out  of 
an  essay  by  Macaulay,  and  its  introduction  wholesale,  as  original,  into  one  of 
Mr.  Disraeli's  novels. 

The  truth  is  that  Disraeli  is  so  reckless  a  gladiator  that  he  will  catch  up  any 
weapon  of  defence,  use  any  means  of  evasion  and  escape  ;  will  fight  anyhow, 
and  win  anyhow.  In  political  affairs,  at  least,  he  has  no  moral  sense  whatever  ; 
and  the  public  seems  to  tolerate  him  on  that  understanding.  Certainly,  esca- 
pades and  practices  which  would  ruin  the  reputation  of  any  other  public  man  do 
not  seem,  to  bring  Disraeli  into  serious  disrepute.  The  few  high-toned  men  of 
his  own  party  and  the  other  who  hold  all  trickery  in  detestation,  had  made  up 
their  minds  about  him  long  ago ;  and  nothing  could  hurt  him  more  in  their  es- 
teem— the  great  majority  of  politicians  laugh  at  the  whole  thing,  and  take  no 
thought.  The  feeling  seems  to  be,  "  We  don't  expect  grave  and  severe  virtue 
from  this  man  ;  we  take  him  as  he  is.  It  would  be  ridiculous  to  apply  a  grave 
moral  test  to  anything  he  may  say  or  do."  In  Lockhart's  "Life  of  Walter 
Scott,"  it  is  told  that  the  great  novelist  went  one  morning  very  early  to  call  on  a 
certain  friend.  The  friend  was  in  bed,  and  Scott,  pushing  into  the  room  famil- 
iarly, found  that  his  friend  was — not  alone,  as  he  expected  him  to  be.  Scott  was 
a  highly  moral  man,  and  he  would  have  turned  his  back  indignantly  on  any  other 
of  his  friends  whom  he  found  guilty  of  vice ;  but  his  biographer  says  that  he 
took  the  discovery  he  had  made  very  lightly  in  this  instance  ;  and  he  afterward 
explained  that  the  delinquent  was  so  ridiculously  without  depth  of  character  it 
would  be  absurd  to  find  serious  fault  with  anything  he  did.  Perhaps  it  is  in  a 
similar  spirit  that  the  British  public  regard  Mr.  Disraeli.  He  delivered  a  memo- 
rable peroration  one  night  last  year  in  the  House  of  Commons,  the  utterance 
and  the  language  of  which  were  so  peculiar  that  charity  itself  could  not  affect  to 
be  ignorant  of  the  stimulating  cause  which  sent  forth  such  extraordinary  elo- 
quence. Yet  hardly  anybody  seemed  to  regard  it  as  more  than  a  good  joke ; 
and  the  newspapers  which  were  most  indignant  and  most  scandalized  over  An- 
drew Johnson's  celebrated  inaugural  address  made  no  allusion  whatever  to  Mr. 
Disraeli's  bewildering  outburst.  One  reason,  probably,  is  that  Disraeli,  in  pri- 
vate, is  much  liked.  He  is  very  kindly;  he  is  a  good  friend  ;  he  is  sympathetic 
ia  his  dealings  with  young  politicians,  and  is  always  glad  to  give  a  helping  hand 


ENGLISH  TORYISM  AND  ITS  LEADERS.  131 

to  a  young  man  of  talent.  Personal  ambition,  which,  in  Mr.  Bright's  eyes,  is 
something  despicable,  and  which  Mr.  Gladstone  probably  regards  as  a  sin,  is, 
in  Disraeli's  acceptation,  something  generous  and  elevating,  something  to  be 
fostered  and  encouraged.  Therefore,  young  men  of  talent  admire  Disraeli,  and 
are  glad  and  proud  to  gather  round  him.  The  men  who  have  any  brains  in  the 
Tory  ranks  are  usually  of  the  adventurer  class  ;  and  they  form  a  phalanx  by  the 
aid  of  which  Disraeli  can  do  great  things.  No  matter  how  the  honest,  dull  bulk 
of  his  party  may  distrust  him,  they  cannot  do  without  him  and  his  phalanx  ;  and 
they  allow  him  to  win  his  battles  by  the  force  of  their  votes,  and  they  think  he 
is  winning  their  battles  all  the  time. 

One  young  man  of  brains  there  was  on  the  Tory  side  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, who  did  not  like  Disraeli,  and  never  professed  to  like  him.  This  was 
Lord  Robert  Cecil,  who  subsequently  became  Viscount  Cranbourne,  and  now 
sits  in  the  House  of  Lords  as  Marquis  of  Salisbury.  Lord  Robert  Cecil  was  by 
far  the  ablest  scion  of  noble  Toryism  in  the  House  of  Commons.  Younger 
than  Lord  Stanley  he  had  not  Lord  Stanley's  solidity  and  caution;  but  he  had 
much  more  of  original  ability;  he  had  brilliant  ideas,  great  readiness  in  debate, 
and  a  perfect  genius  for  saying  bitter  things  in  the  bitterest  tone.  The  younger 
son  of  a  wealthy  peer,  he  had,  in  consequence  of  a  dispute  with  his  father,  man- 
fully accepted  honorable  poverty,  and  was  glad,  for  no  short  time,  to  help  out 
his  means  by  the  use  of  his  pen.  He  wrote  in  the  "  Quarterly  Review,"  the 
time-honored  organ  of  Toryism  ;  and  after  a  while  certain  political  articles  regu- 
larly appearing  in  that  periodical  became  identified  with  his  name.  One  great 
object  of  these  articles  seemed  to  be  to  denounce  Mr.  Disraeli  and  warn  the 
Tory  party  against  him  as  a  traitor,  certain  in  the  end  to  sell  and  surrender  their 
principles.  Lord  Robert  Cecil  was  an  ultra-Tory — or  at  least  thought  himself 
so — I  feel  convinced  that  his  intellect  and  his  experience  will  set  him  free  one 
day.  He  was  a  Tory  on  principle  and  would  listen  to  no  compromise.  People 
did  not  at  first  see  how  much  ability  there  was  in  him — very  few  indeed  saw  how 
much  of  genuine  manhood  and  nobleness  there  was  in  him.  His  tall,  bent, 
awkward  figure  ;  his  prematurely  bald  crown,  his  face  with  an  outline  and  a 
beard  that  reminded  one  of  a  Jew  pedler  from  the  Minories,  his  ungainly  ges- 
tures, his  unmelodious  voice,  and  the  extraordinary  and  wanton  bitterness  of  his 
tongue,  set  the  ordinary  observer  strongly  against  him.  He  seemed  to  delight 
in  being  gratuitously  offensive.  Let  me  give  one  illustration.  He  assailed  Mr. 
Gladstone's  financial  policy  one  night,  and  said  it  was  like  the  practice  of  a  pet- 
tifogging attorney.  This  was  rather  coarse  and  it  was  received  with  loud  mur- 
murs of  disapprobation,  but  Lord  Robert  went  on  unheeding.  Next  night,  how- 
ever, when  the  debate  was  resumed,  he  rose  and  said  he  feared  he  had  used  lan- 
guage the  previous  evening  which  was  calculated  to  give  offence,  and  which  he 
could  not  justify.  There  were  murmurs  of  encouraging  applause — nothing  de- 
lights the  House  of  Commons  like  an  unsolicited  and  manly  apology.  Yes,  he 
had,  on  the  previous  night,  in  a  moment  of  excitement,  compared  the  policy  of 
the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  to  the  practice  of  a  pettifogging  attorney. 
That  was  language  which  on  sober  consideration  he  felt  he  could  not  justify  and 
ought  not  to  have  used,  "  and  therefore,"  said  Lord  Robert,  "  I  beg  leave  to 
offer  my  sincere  apology" — here  Mr.  Gladstone  half  rose  from  his  seat,  with  face 
of  eager  generosity,  ready  to  pardon  even  before  fully  asked — "  I  beg  leave  to 
tender  my  sincere  apology — to  the  attorneys  !  "  Half  the  House  roared  with 
laughter,  the  other  half  with  anger — and  Gladstone  threw  himself  back  in  his 
seat  with  an  expression  of  mingled  disappointment,  pity  and  scorn,  on  his  pallid, 
noble  features. 


132  ENGLISH  TORYISM  AND  ITS  LEADERS. 

There  was  something  so  wanton,  something  so  nearly  approaching  to  out- 
rageous buffoonery,  in  conduct  like  this,  on  the  part  of  Lord  Robert  Cecil,  that  it 
was  long  before  impartial  observers  came  to  recognize  the  fine  intellect  and  the 
manly  character  that  were  disguised  under  such  an  unprepossessing  exterior. 
When  the  Tories  came  into  power,  the  great  place  of  Secretary  for  India  was 
given  to  Lord  Robert,  who  had  then  become  Viscount  Cranbourne,  and  the 
responsibilities  of  office  wrought  as  complete  a  change  in  him  as  the  wearing  of 
the  crown  did  in  Harry  the  Fifth.  No  man  ever  displayed  in  so  short  a  time 
greater  aptitude  for  the  duties  of  the  office  he  had  undertaken,  or  a  loftier  sense 
of  its  tremendous  moral  and  political  responsibility,  than  did  Lord  Cranbourne 
during  his  too  brief  tenure  of  the  Indian  Secretaryship.  The  cynic  had  become 
a  statesman,  the  intellectual  gladiator  an  earnest  champion  of  exalted  political 
principle.  The  license  of  tongue,  in  which  Lord  Cranbourne  had  revelled 
while  yet  a  free  lance,  he  absolutely  renounced  when  he  became  a  responsible 
minister.  He  extorted  the  respect  and  admiration  of  Gladstone  and  Bright,  and 
indeed  of  every  one  who  took  the  slightest  interest  in  the  condition  and  the  fu- 
ture of  India.  The  manner  of  his  leaving  office  became  him,  too,  almost  as 
much  as  his  occupation  of  it.  He  was  sincerely  opposed  to  a  sudden  lowering 
of  the  franchise,  and  he  insisted  that  his  party  ought  to  think  nothing  of  power 
when  compared  with  principle.  He  found  that  Disraeli  was  determined  to  sur- 
render anything  rather  than  power,  and  he  withdrew  from  the  uncongenial  com- 
panionship. He  resigned  office,  and  dropped  into  the  ranks  once  more,  never 
hesitating  to  express  his  conviction  of  the  utter  insincerity  of  the  Conservative 
leader.  He  would  have  been  a  sharp  and  stinging  thorn  in  Disraeli's  side,  only 
that  death  intervened  and  took  away,  not  him,  but  his  father.  The  death  of  his 
elder  brother  had  made  Lord  Robert  Cecil,  Viscount  Cranbourne ;  the  death  of 
his  father  now  converted  Viscount  Cranbourne  into  the  Marquis  of  Salisbury,  and 
condemned  him  to  the  languid,  inert,  lifeless  atmosphere  of  the  House  of  Peers. 
The  sincere  pity  of  all  who  admired  him  followed  the  brilliant  Salisbury  in  his 
melancholy  descent.  I  should  despair  of  conveying  to  an  American  reader 
unacquainted  with  English  politics  any  adequate  idea  of  the  profundity  and 
hopelessness  of  the  fall  which  precipitates  a  young,  ardent  and  gifted  politician 
from  the  brilliant  battle-ground  of  the  House  of  Commons  into  the  lifele-ss, 
Lethean  pool  of  the  House  of  Lords. 

Still,  the  Tory  party  may  be  led,  as  it  has  been,  by  a  chief  in  the  House  of 
Lords,  although  its  great  and  splendid  fights  must  be  fought  in  the  Commons. 
If  then,  in  our  time,  Toryism  ever  should  again  become  a  principle  which  a 
man  of  genius  and  high  character  could  fairly  fight  for,  it  has  a  leader  ready 
to  its  hand  in  the  Marquis  of  Salisbury.  For  the  present  it  has  Lord  Cairns. 
The  Earl  of  Derby's  health  no  longer  allows  him  to  undertake  the  serious  and 
laborious  duties  of  party  leadership.  When  he  withdrew  from  the  front,  an  at- 
tempt was  made  to  put  up  with  Lord  Malmesbury.  But  Malmesbury  is  stupid 
and  muddle-headed  to  a  degree  which  even  Tory  peers  cannot  endure  in  a  Tory 
peer  ;  and  it  has  somehow  been  "  borne  in  upon  him  "  that  he  had  better  leave 
the  place  to  some  one  really  qualified  to  fill  it.  Now,  the  Tories  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  the  country  gentlemen  of  England,  the  men  whose  ancestors  came 
over,  perhaps,  with  the  Conqueror,  the  men  who  imbibed  family  Toryism  from 
the  breasts  of  their  mothers,  are  driven,  when  they  want  a  capable  leader,  to  fol- 
low a  renegade  Radical,  the  son  of  a  middle-class  Jew.  In  like  manner  the 
Tory  Lords,  also  sadly  needing  an  efficient  leader,  are  compelled  to  take  up  with 
a  lawyer  from  Belfast,  the  son  of  middle-class  parents  in  the  North  of  Ireland, 


ENGLISH  TORYISM  AND  ITS  LEADERS.  IStr 

who  has  fought  his  way  by  sheer  talent  and  energy  into  the  front  rank  of  the 
bar,  into  the  front  bench  of  the  Parliamentary  Opposition,  and  at  last  into  a  peer 
age.  Lord  Cairns  is  a  very  capable  man  ;  his  sudden  rise  into  high  place  and  in- 
fluence proves  the  fact  of  itself,  for  he  was  not  a  young  man  when  he  entered 
Parliament,  obscure  and  unknown,  and  he  is  now  only  in  the  prime  of  life,  while 
he  leads  the  Opposition  in  the  House  of  Lords.  He  is  one  of  the  most  fluent 
and  effective  debaters  in  either  House  ;  he  has  great  command  of  telling  argu- 
ment ;  his  training  at  the  bar  gives  him  the  faculty  of  making  the  very  most, 
and  at  the  shortest  notice,  of  all  the  knowledge  and  all  the  facts  he  can  bring  to 
bear  on  any  question.  He  has  shown  more  than  once  that  he  is  capable  of  pour- 
ing forth  a  powerful,  almost  indeed,  a  passionate  invective.  An  orator  in  the 
highest  sense  he  certainly  is  not.  No  gleam  of  the  poetic  softens  or  brightens 
his  lithe  and  nervous  logic  ;  no  deep  feeling  animates,  inspires  and  sanctifies  it. 
He  has  made  no  speeches  which  anybody  hereafter  will  care  to  read.  He  has 
made,  he  will  make,  no  mark  upon  his  age.  When  he  dies,  he  wholly  dies. 
But  living,  he  is  a  skilful  and  a  capable  man — far  better  qualified  to  be  a  party 
leader  than  an  Erskine  or  a  Grattan  would  be.  A  North  of  Ireland  Presbyte- 
rian, he  has  made  his  way  to  a  peerage,  and  now  to  be  the  leader  of  peers,  with 
less  of  native  genius  than  that  which  conducted  Wolfe  Tone,  another  North  of 
Ireland  Presbyterian,  to  rebellion  and  failure  and  a  bloody  death.  He  has, 
above/  all  things,  skill  and  discretion  ;  and  he  can  lead  the  Tory  party  well,  so 
long  as  no  great  cause  has  to  be  vindicated,  no  splendid  phantom  of  a  principle 
maintained.  His  name  and  his  antecedents  are  useful  to  us  now,  inasmuch  as 
they  serve  still  farther  to  illustrate  the  fact  that  Toryism  is  not  led  by  Tories. 

In  speaking  of  Tory  leaders  one  ought  not,  of  course,  to  leave  out  the  name 
of  Lord  Stanley.  But  Lord  Stanley  is  only  a  Tory  ex  officio,  and  by  virtue  of 
his  position  as  the  eldest  son  and  heir  of  the  great  Earl  of  Derby.  I  have  never 
heard  of  Lord  Stanley's  uttering  a  Tory  sentiment,  even  when  he  had  to  play  a 
Tory  part.  His  speeches  are  all  the  speeches  of  a  steady,  respectable,  thought- 
ful sort  of  Liberal,  inclined  to  study  carefully  both  or  all  sides  of  a  question,  and 
opposed  to  extreme  opinions  either  way.  He  will  never,  it  is  quite  clear,  be 
guilty  of  the  audacity  of  openly  breaking  with  his  party  while  his  father  lives  ; 
and  perhaps  when  he  becomes  Earl  of  Derby,  there  may  be  nothing  distinc- 
tively Tory  worth  fighting  about.  Lord  Stanley  is  indeed  totally  devoid  of  that 
generous  ardor  which  makes  men  open  converts.  He  is  no  longer  young,  and 
he  will  probably  remain  all  his  life  where  he  stands  at  present.  But  a  gen- 
uine Tory  he  is  not.  I  confess  that  at  one  time  I  looked  to  him  with  great 
hope,  as  a  man  likely  to  develop  into  statesmanship  of  the  highest  order,  and  to 
announce  himself  as  a  votary  of  political  and  intellectual  progress.  Some  years 
ago  I  wrote  an  article  in  the  "Westminster  Review,"  the  object  of  which  was 
to  point  to  Lord  Stanley  as  the  future  colleague  of  Gladstone  in  a  great  and  a 
really  liberal  government.  I  have  changed  my  opinion  since.  Lord  Stanley 
wants,  not  the  brains,  but  the  heart  for  such  a  place.  He  has  not  the  spirit  to 
step  out  of  his  hereditary  way.  He  is  one  of  the  sort  of  men  of  whom  Goethe 
used  to  say,  "  If  only  they  would  commit  an  extravagance  even,  I  should  have 
some  hope  for  them."  He  seems  to  care  for  little  beyond  accuracy  of  judgment 
and  propriety ;  and  I  do  not  suppose  accuracy  of  judgment  and  propriety  ever 
made  a  great  statesman.  There  is  nothing  venturesome  about  Lord  Stanley — 
therefore  there  is  nothing  great.  A  man  to  be  great  must  brave  being  ridicu- 
lous ;  and  I  do  not  remember  that  Lord  Stanley  has  ever  run  the  risk  of  being 
ridiculous.  One  of  the  finest  and  most  celebrated  passages  of  modern  Parlia- 


1S4  ENGLISH  TORYISM  AND  ITS  LEADERS. 

mentary  eloquence  is  that  in  which  George  Canning,  vindicating  his  recognition 
of  the  South  American  republics,  proclaimed  that  he  had  called  in  the  New 
World  to  redress  the  balance  of  the  Old.  I  once  heard  a  member  of  the  House 
of  Lords,  now  dead,  who  sat  in  the  House  of  Commons  near  Canning,  when 
Canning  spoke  that  famous  speech,  say  that  when  the  orator  came  to  the  great 
climax  the  House  was  actually  breaking  into  a  titter,  so  absurd  then  did  any 
grandiloquence  about  South  American  republics  seem  ;  and  it  was  only  the  ear- 
nestness and  resolve  of  his  manner  that  commanded  a  respectful  attention,  and 
thus  compelled  the  House  to  recognize  the  genuine  grandeur  of  the  idea,  and  to 
break  into  a  tempest  of  applause.  I  have  heard  something  the  same  told  of 
one  of  the  grandest  passages  in  any  of  Bright's  speeches — that  in  one  of  his  ora- 
tions against  the  Crimean  War,  in  which  he  declared  that  he  already  heard,  during 
the  debate,  the  beating  of  the  wings  of  the  Angel  of  Death.  The  House  was 
under  the  influence  of  a  war  fever,  and  disposed  to  scoff  at  all  appeals  to  pru- 
dence or  to  pity  ;  and  it  was  just  on  the  verge  of  a  laugh  at  the  orator's  majestic 
apostrophe,  when  his  earnestness  conquered,  the  grandeur  of  the  moment  was 
recognized,  and  a  peal  of  irrepressible  applause  proclaimed  the  triumph  of  his 
eloquence.  Now,  these  are  the  risks  that  a  man  like  Lord  Stanley  never  will 
run.  Only  genius  makes  such  ventures.  He  is  always  safe :  great  statesmen 
must  sometimes  brave  terrible  hazards.  In  England  he  has  received  immense 
praise  for  the  part  he  took  in  averting  a  war  between  France  and  Prussia  on  the 
Luxembourg  question.  Now,  it  is  quite  true  that  he  did  much  ;  that,  in  fact,  he 
lent  all  the  influence  of  England  to  the  mode  of  arrangement  by  which  both  the 
contending  Powers  were  enabled  to  back  decently  out  of  a  dangerous  and  pain- 
ful position.  But  the  idea  of  such  a  mode  of  settlement  did  not  come  from  him. 
It  was  originated  by  Baron  von  Beust,  the  Austrian  Prime  Minister,  and  it  was 
quietly  urged  a  good  deal  before  Lord  Stanley  saw  it.  Von  Beust,  who  has  a 
keener  wit  than  Stanley,  knew  that  if  the  proposition  came  directly  from  him  it 
would,  ipso  facto,  be  odious  to  Prussia ;  and  he  was,  therefore,  rejoiced  when 
Lord  Stanley  took  it  up  and  adopted  it  as  his  own  and  England's.  Von  Beust 
was  well  content,  and  so  was  Lord  Stanley — just  as  Cuddie  Headrigg,  in  "  Old 
Mortality,"  is  content  that  John  Gudyill  shall  have  the  responsibility  and  the 
honor  of  the  shot  which  the  latter  never  fired.  The  one  original  thing  which 
Lord  Stanley  did  during  the  controversy  was  to  write  a  dispatch  to  Prussia 
recommending  her  to  come  to  terms,  because  of  the  superior  navy  of  France,  and 
the  certainty,  in  the  event  of  war,  that  France  would  have  the  best  of  it  at  sea. 
Now,  this  was  a  capital  argument  to  influence  a  man  like  Lord  Stanley  him- 
self— calm,  cold-blooded,  utterly  rational.  But  human  ingenuity  could  hardly 
have  devised  an  appeal  less  likely  to  influence  Prussia  in  the  way  of  peace. 
Prussia,  flushed  with  her  splendid  victories  over  Austria,  and  deeply  offended  by 
the  arrogant  and  dictatorial  conduct  of  France,  was  much  more  likely  to  be 
stung  by  such  an  argument,  if  it  affected  her  at  all,  into  flinging  down  the  gaunt- 
let at  once,  and  inviting  France  to  come  if  she  dared.  The  use  of  such  a  mode 
of  persuasion  is,  indeed,  an  adequate  illustration  of  the  whole  character  of  Lord 
Stanley.  Cool,  prudent,  and  rational,  he  is  capable  enough  of  weighing  things 
fairly  when  they  are  presented  to  him  ;  but  he  can  neither  create  an  opportunity 
nor  run  a  risk.  Therefore,  he  remains  officially  a  Tory,  mentally  a,  Liberal,  po- 
litically neither  the  one  nor  the  other.  His  bones  are  marrowless,  his  blood  is 
cold.  He  can  forfeit  his  own  career,  and  hazard  his  reputation  for  his  party ; 
but  that  is  all.  He  cannot  give  his  mind  to  it.  and  he  cannot  redeem  himself 
from  his  futile  bondage  to  it.  He  is  a  respectable  speaker,  despite  his  defective 


ENGLISH  TORYISM  AND  ITS  LEADERS.  loo 

articulation  and  his  lifeless  manner ;  he  will  be  a  respectable  politician,  despite 
his  want  of  faith  in,  or  zeal  for  the  cause  he  tries  to  follow.  That  is  his  career  ; 
that  is  the  doom  to  which  he  voluntarily  condemns  himself. 

I  do  not  know  that  there  are  any  other  Tory  chiefs  worth  talking  about.  Sir 
Stafford  Northcote  looks  like  a  Bonn  or  Heidelberg  professor,  and  has  a  fair 
average  intellect,  fit  for  commonplace  finance  and  elementary  politics  ;  there  is 
not  a  ghost  of  an  idea  in  him.  Walpole  is  a  pompous,  well-meaning,  gentle- 
manlike imbecile.  Gathorne  Hardy  is  fluent,  as  the  sand  in  an  hourglass  is 
fluent — he  can  pour  out  words  and  serve  to  mark  the  passing  of  time.  Sir 
John  Pakington  is  an  educated  Dogberry,  a  respectable  Justice  Shallow.  Not 
upon  men  like  these  do  the  political  fortunes  of  the  Tory  party  of  our  day  de- 
pend, although  Walpole  and  Pakington  fairly  represent  the  sincerity,  the  man- 
hood, and  the  respectability  of  Toryism. 

I  come  back  to  the  point  from  which  I  started — that  Toryism,  in  itself,  is 
only  another  word  for  stupidity,  and  that  any  triumphs  the  party  have  won  or 
may  win  are  secured  by  the  surrender  of  the  principle  they  profess  to  be  fighting 
for,  and  by  the  skilful  management  of  men  whose  conscience  permits  them  to 
adapt  the  means  unscrupulously  to  the  end.  Were  the  Tory  party  led  by  genu- 
ine Tories  it  would  have  been  extinct  long  ago.  It  lives  and  looks  upon  the 
earth,  it  has  its  triumphs  and  its  gains,  its  present  and  its  future,  only  because 
by  very  virtue  of  its  own  dulness  it  has  allowed  itself  to  be  led  by  men  whom 
it  ought  to  detest,  whom  it  sometimes  does  distrust,  but  who  have  the  wit  to  sell 
principle  in  the  dearest  market,  and  buy  reputation  in  the  cheapest.* 


"GEORGE  ELIOT"  AND  GEORGE  LEWES. 


LITERARY  reputations  are,  in  one  respect,  like  wines — some  are  greatly 
improved  by  a  long  voyage,  while  others  lose  all  zest  and  strength  in  the 
process  of  crossing  the  ocean.  There  ought  to  be  hardly  any  difference,  one 
would  think,  between  the  literary  taste  of  the  public  of  London  and  that  of  the 
public  of  New  York  ;  and  yet  it  is  certain  that  an  author  or  a  book  may  be  posi- 
tively celebrated  in  the  one  city  and  only  Larely  known  and  coldly  recognized  in 
the  other.  Every  one,  of  course,  has  noticed  the  fact  that  certain  English  au- 
thors are  better  known  and  appreciated  in  New  York  than  in  London  ;  certain 
American  writers  more  talked  of  in  London  than  in  New  York.  The  general 
public  of  England  do  not  seem  to  me  to  appreciate  the  true  position  of  Whitticr 
and  Lowell  among  American  poets.  The  average  Englishman  knows  hardly 
anything  of  any  American  poet  but  Longfellow,  who  receives,  I  venture  to  think, 
a  far  more  wholesale  and  enthusiastic  admiration  in  England  than  in  his  own 
country.  Robert  Buchanan,  the  Scottish  poet,  lately,  I  have  read,  described 
"  Evangeline  "  as  a  far  finer  poem  than  Goethe's  "  Hermann  und  Dorothea,"  a 
judgment  which  I  presume  and  hope  it  would  be  impossible  to  get  any  Ameri- 
can scholar  and  critic  to  indorse  or  even  to  consider  seriously.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  well  known  that  both  the  Brownings — certainly  Mrs.  Browning — 
found  quicker  and  more  cordial  appreciation  in  America  than  in  England. 
Lately,  we  in  London  have  taken  to  discussing  and  debating  over  Walt  Whit- 
man with  a  warmth  and  interest  which  people  in  New  York  do  not  seem 
to  manifest  in  regard  to  the  author  of  "  Leaves  of  Grass."  Charles  Dickens 
appears  to  me  to  have  more  devoted  admirers  among  the  best  class  of  readers 
here  than  he  has  in  his  own  country.  Of  course,  it  would  be  hardly  possible  for 
any  man  to  be  more  popular  and  more  successful  than  Dickens  is  in  England  ; 
but  New  York  journals  quote  him  and  draw  illustrations  from  him  much  more 
frequently  than  London  papers  do — I  do  not  think  any  day  has  passed  since 
first  I  came  to  this  country,  six  or  seven  months  ago,  that  I  have  not  seen  at 
least  two  or  three  allusions  to  Dickens  in  the  leading  articles  of  the  daily  papers — 
and  I  question  whether,  among  critics  standing  as  high  in  London  as  George 
William  Curtis  does  here,  Dickens  could  find  the  enthusiastic,  the  almost  lyrical 
devotion  of  Curtis's  admiration.  Charles  Reade,  again,  is  more  generally  and 
warmly  admired  here  than  in  England.  Am  I  wrong  in  supposing  that  the  re- 
verse is  the  case  with  regard  to  the  authoress  of  "  Romola  "  and  "  The  Mill  on 
the  Floss?"  All  American  critics  and  all  American  readers  of  taste,  have 
doubtless  testified  practically  their  recognition  of  the  genius  of  this  extraordi- 
nary woman ;  but  there  seems  to  me  to  be  relatively  less  admiration  for  her  in 
New  York  than  in  London.  The  general  verdict  of  English  criticism  would,  I 
feel  no  doubt,  place  George  Eliot  on  a  higher  pedestal  than  Charles  Dickens. 
We  regard  her  as  belonging  to  a  higher  school  of  art,  as  more  nearly  affined 
to  the  great  immortal  few  whose  genius  and  fame  transcend  the  fashion  of  the 
age  and  defy  the  caprice  of  public  taste.  So  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  observe, 
I  do  not  think  this  is  the  opinion  of  American  criticism. 

In  any  case,  the  mere  question  will  excuse  my  writing  a  few  pages  about  a 
woman  whom  I  regard  as  the  greatest  living  novelist  of  England  ;  as,  on  the 
whole,  the  greatest  woman  now  engaged  in  European  literature.  Only  George 
Sand  and  Harriet  Martineau  could  fairly  be  compared  with  her ;  and,  while  Miss 


"GEORGE  ELIOT"  AND  GEORGE  LEWES.  137 

Martineau,  of  course,  is  far  inferior  in  all  the  higher  gifts  of  imagination  and  the 
higher  faculties  of  art,  George  Sand,  with  all  her  passion,  her  rich  fancy,  and 
daring,  subtle  analysis  of  certain  natures,  has  never  exhibited  the  serene,  sym- 
metrical power  displayed  in  "  Romola  "  and  in  "  Silas  Marner."  Mrs.  Lewes 
(it  would  be  affectation  to  try  to  assume  that  there  is  still  any  mystery  about  the 
identity  of  "  George  Eliot")  is  what  George  Sand  is  not — a  great  writer,  merely 
as  a  writer.  Few,  indeed,  are  the  beings  who  have  ever  combined  so  many  high 
qualities  in  one  person  as  Mrs.  Lewes  does.  Her  literary  career  began  as  a 
translator  and  an  essayist.  Her  tastes  seemed  then  to  lead  her  wholly  into  the 
somewhat  barren  fields  where  German  metaphysics  endeavor  to  come  to  the  re- 
lief or  the  confusion  of  German  theology.  She  became  a  contributor  to  the 
"  Westminster  Review  ;  "  then  she  became  its  assistant  editor,  and  worked  as- 
siduously for  it  under  the  direction  of  Dr.  John  Chapman,  the  editor,  with  whose 
family  she  lived  for  a  time,  and  in  whose  house  she  first  met  George  Henry 
Lewes.  She  is  an  accomplished  linguist,  a  brilliant  talker,  a  musician  of  extra- 
ordinary skill.  She  has  a  musical  sense  so  delicate  and  exquisite  that  there  are 
tender,  simple,  true  ballad  melodies  which  fill  her  with  a  pathetic  pain  almost  too 
keen  to  bear ;  and  yet  she  has  the  firm,  strong  command  of  tone  and  touch, 
without  which  a  really  scientific  musician  cannot  be  made.  I  do  not  think  this 
exceeding  sensibility  of  nature  is  often  to  be  found  in  combination  with  a  genu- 
ine mastery  of  the  practical  science  of  music.  But  Mrs.  Lewes  has  mastered 
many  sciences  as  well  as  literatures.  Probably  no  other  novel  writer,  since  novel 
writing  became  a  business,  ever  possessed  one  tithe  of  her  scientific  knowledge. 
Indeed,  hardly  anything  is  rarer  than  the  union  of  the  scientific  and  the  literary 
or  artistic  temperaments.  So  rare  is  it,  that  the  exceptional,  the  almost  solitary 
instance  of  Goethe  comes  up  at  once,  distinct  and  striking,  to  the  mind.  Eng- 
lish novelists  are  even  less  likely  to  have  anything  of  a  scientific  taste  than 
French  or  German.  Dickens  knows  nothing  of  science,  and  has,  indeed,  as  lit- 
tle knowledge  of  any  kind,  save  that  which  is  derived  from  observation,  as  any 
respectable  Englishman  could  well  have.  Thackeray  was  a  man  of  varied  read- 
ing, versed  in  the  lighter  literature  of  several  languages,  and  strongly  imbued  with 
artistic  tastes  ;  but  he  had  no  care  for  science,  and  knew  nothing  of  it  but  just 
what  every  one  has  to  learn  at  school.  Lord  Lytton's  science  is  a  mere  sham. 
Charlotte  Brontd  was  all  genius  and  ignorance.  Mrs.  Lewes  is  all  genius  and 
culture.  Had  she  never  written  a  page  of  fiction,  nay,  had  she  never  written  a 
line  of  poetry  or  prose,  she  must  have  been  regarded  with  wonder  and  admira- 
tion by  all  who  knew  her  as  a  woman  of  vast  and  varied  knowledge  ;  a  woman 
who  could  think  deeply  and  talk  brilliantly,  who  could  play  high  and  severe 
classical  music  like  a  professional  performer,  and  could  bring  forth  the  most 
delicate  and  tender  aroma  of  nature  and  poetry  lying  deep  in  the  heart  of  some 
simple,  old-fashioned  Scotch  or  English  ballad.  Nature,  indeed,  seemed  to  have- 
given  to  this  extraordinary  woman  all  the  gifts  a  woman  could  ask  or  have — save 
one.  It  will  not,  I  hope,  be  considered  a  piece  of  gossipping  personality  if  I 
allude  to  a  fact  which  must,  some  day  or  other,  be  part  of  literary  history.  Mrs. 
Lewes  is  not  beautiful.  In  her  appearance  there  is  nothing  whatever  to  attract 
admiration.  Hers  is  not  even  a  face  like  that  of  Charlotte  Cushman,  which,  at 
least,  must  make  a  deep  impression,  and  seize  at  once  the  attention  of  the  gazer. 
Nor  does  it  seem,  like  that  of  Madame  de  Stae'l  or  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning, 
informed  and  illuminated  by  the  light  of  genius.  Mrs.  Lewes  is  what  we  in 
England  call  decidedly  plain — what  people  in  New  York  call  homely  ;  and  what 
persons  who  did  not  care  to  soften  the  force  of  an  unpleasant  truth  would  de- 
scribe probably  by  a  still  harder  and  more  emphatic  adjective. 


ir.8  "GEORGE  ELIOT"  AND  GEORGE  LEWES. 

This  woman,  thus  rarely  gifted  with  poetry  and  music  and  imagination — thus 
disciplined  in  man's  highest  studies  and  accustomed  to  the  most  laborious  of  man's 
literary  drudgery — does  not  seem  to  have  found  out,  until  she  had  passed  what  is 
conventionally  regarded  as  the  age  of  romance,  that  she  had  in  her,  transcendent 
above  all  other  gifts,  the  faculty  of  the  novelist.  When  an  author  who  is  not 
very  young  makes  a  great  hit  at  last,  we  soon  begin  to  learn  that  he  had  already 
made  many  attempts  in  the  same  direction,  and  his  publishers  find  an  eager  de- 
mand for  the  stories  and  sketches  which,  when  they  first  appeared,  utterly  failed 
lo  attract  attention.  Thackeray's  early  efforts,  Trollope's,  Charles  Reade's, 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne's,  all  these  have  been  lighted  into  success  by  the  blaze  of 
the  later  triumph.  But  it  does  not  seem  that  Miss  Marion  Evans,  as  she  then 
was,  ever  published  anything  in  the  way  of  fiction  previous  to  the  series  of 
sketches  which  appeared  in  "  Blackwood's  Magazine,"  and  were  called  "  Scenes 
of  Clerical  Life."  These  sketches  attracted  considerable  attention,  and  were 
much  admired  ;  but  I  do  not  think  many  people  saw  in  them  the  capacity  which 
produced  "  Adam  Bede  "  and  "  Romola."  With  the  publication  of  "  Adam 
Bede  "  came  a  complete  triumph.  The  author  was  elevated  at  once  and  by  ac- 
clamation to  the  highest  rank  among  living  novelists.  I  think  it  was  in  the  very 
first  number  of  the  "Cornhill  Magazine"  that  Thackeray,  in  a  gossiping  para- 
graph about  novelists  of  the  day,  whom  he  mentioned  alphabetically  and  by  their 
initials,  spoke  of  "E  "  as  a  "star  of  the  first  magnitude  just  risen  on  the  hori- 
zon." Thackeray,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  one  of  the  first,  if  not,  indeed,  the 
very  first,  to  recognize  the  genius  manifested  in  "Jane  Eyre."  The  publishers 
sent  him  some  of  the  proof  sheets  for  his  advice,  and  Thackeray  saw  in  them  the 
work  of  a  great  novelist. 

The  place  which  Mrs.  Lewes  thus  so  suddenly  won,  she  has,  of  course,  always 
maintained.  Her  position  of  absolute  supremacy  over  all  other  women  writers 
in  England  is  something  peculiar  and  curious.  She  is  first — and  there  is  no 
second.  No  living  authoress  in  Britain  is  ever  now  compared  with  her.  I 
read,  not  long  since,  in  a  New  York  paper,  a  sentence  which  spoke  of  George 
Eljot  and  Miss  Mulock  as  being  the  greatest  English  authoresses  in  the  field  of 
fiction.  It  seemed  very  odd  and  funny  to  me.  Certainly,  an  English  critic 
would  never  have  thought  of  bracketing  together  such  a  pair.  Miss  Mulock  is  a 
graceful,  true-hearted,  good  writer  ;  but  Miss  Mulock  and  George  Eliot !  Rob- 
ert Lytton  and  Robert  Browning  !  "A.  K.  H.  B."  (I  think  these  are  the  initials) 
and  John  Stuart  Mill !  Mark  Lemon's  novels  and  Charles  Dickens's  !  Mrs. 
Lewes  has  made  people  read  novels  who  perhaps  never  read  fiction  from  any 
other  pen.  She  has  made  the  novel  the  companion  and  friend  and  study  of 
scholars  and  thinkers  and  statesmen.  Her  books  are  discussed  by  the  gravest 
critics  as  productions  of  the  highest  school  of  art.  Men  and  journals  which  have 
always  regarded,  or  affected  to  regard,  Thackeray  as  a  mere  cynic,  and  Dickens 
as  little  better  than  a  professional  buffoon,  have  discussed  "The  Mill  on  the 
Floss  "  and  "  Romola  "  as  if  these  novels  were  already  classic.  Of  course  it 
would  be  a  very  doubtful  kind  of  merit  which  commanded  the  admiration  of  lit- 
erary prigs  or  pedants  ;  but  that  is  not  the  merit  of  George  Eliot.  Her  books 
find  their  way  to  all  hearts  and  intelligences,  but  it  is  their  peculiarity  that  they 
compel,  they  extort  the  admiration  of  men  who  would  disparage  all  novels,  if 
they  could,  as  frivolous  and  worthless,  but  who  are  forced  even  by  their  own 
canons  and  principles  to  recognize  the  deep  clear  thought,  the  noble  culture, 
the  penetrating,  analytical  power,  which  are  evident  in  almost  every  chapter  of 
these  stories.  Most  of  our  novelists  write  in  a  slipslop,  careless  style.  Die- 


"  GEORGE  ELIOT"  AND  GEORGE  LEWES.  139 

kens  is  worthless,  if  regarded  merely  as  a  prose  writer  ;  Trollope  hardly  cares 
about  grammar ;  Charles  Reade,  with  all  his  masculine  force  and  clearness,  is 
terribly  irregular  and  rugged.  The  woman  writers  have  seldom  any  style  at  all. 
George  Eliot's  prose  might  be  the  study  of  a  scholar  anxious  to  acquire  and 
appreciate  a  noble  English  style.  It  is  as  luminous  as  the  language  of  Mill ;  far 
more  truly  picturesque  than  that  of  Ruskin  ;  capable  of  forcible,  memorable  ex- 
pression as  the  robust  Saxon  of  Bright.  I  am  not  going  into  a  criticism  of 
George  Eliot,  who  has  been,  no  doubt,  fully  criticised  in  America  already.  I 
am  merely  engaged  in  pointing  out  the  special  reasons  why  she  has  won  in  Eng- 
land a  certain  kind  of  admiration  which,  it  seems  to  me,  hardly  any  novelist 
ever  has  had  before.  I  think  she  has  infused  into  the  novel  some  elements  it 
never  had  before,  and  so  thoroughly  infused  them  that  they  blend  with  all  the 
other  materials,  and  do  not  form  anywhere  a  solid  lump  or  mass  distinguishable 
from  the  rest.  There  are  philosophical  novels — "  Wilhelm  Meister,"  for  exam- 
ple— which  are  weighed  down  and  loaded  with  the  philosophy,  and  which  the 
world  admires  in  spite  of  th6  philosophy.  There  are  political  novels — Disraeli's, 
for  instance — which  are  only  intelligible  to  those  who  make  politics  and  political 
personalities  a  study,  and  which  viewed  merely  as  stories  would  not  be  worth 
speaking  about.  There  are  novels  with  a  great  direct  purpose  in  them,  such  as 
"  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  or  "  Bleak  House,"  or  Charles  Reade's  "  Hard  Cash  ;  " 
but  these,  after  all,  are  only  magnificent  pamphlets,  splendidly  illustrated  dia- 
tribes. The  deep  philosophic  thought  of  George  Eliot's  novels  suffuses  and 
illumines  them  everywhere.  You  can  point  to  no  sermon  here,  no  lecture  there, 
no  solid  mass  interposing  between  this  incident  and  that,  no  ponderous  moral 
hung  around  the  neck  of  this  or  that  personage.  Only  you  feel  that  you  are 
under  the  control  of  one  who  is  not  merely  a  great  story-teller  but  who  is  also  a 
deep  thinker. 

It  is  not,  perhaps,  unnecessary  to  say  to  American  readers  that  George  Eliot 
is  the  only  novelist  who  can  paint  such  English  people  as  the  Poysers  and  the 
Tullivers  just  as  they  really  are.  She  looks  into  the  very  souls  of  these  people. 
She  tracks  out  their  slow  peculiar  mental  processes  ;  she  reproduces  them  fresh 
and  firm  from  very  life.  Mere  realism,  mere  photographing,  even  from  the  life, 
is  not  in  art  a  very  great  triumph.  But  George  Eliot  can  make  her  dullest  peo- 
ple interesting  and  dramatically  effective.  She  can  paint  two  dull  people  with 
quite  different  ways  of  dulness — say  a  dull  man  and  a  dull  woman,  for  example 
— and  you  are  astonished  to  find  how  utterly  distinct  the  two  kinds  of  stupidity 
are — and  how  intensely  amusing  both  can  be  made.  Look  at  the  two  pedantic, 
pompous,  dull  advocates  in  the  later  part  of  Robert  Browning's  "  The  Ring  and 
the  Book."  How  distinct  they  are  ;  how  different,  how  unlike,  and  how  true,  are 
the  two  portraits.  But  then  it  must  be  owned  that  the  poet  is  himself  terribly 
tedious  just  there.  His  pedants  are  quite  as. tiresome  as  they  would  be  in  real 
life,  if  each  successively  held  you  by  the  button.  George  Eliot  never  is  guilty 
of  this  great  artistic  fault.  You  never  want  to  be  rid  of  Mrs.  Poyser  or  Aunt 
Glegg.  or  the  prattling  Florentines  in  "  Romola."  It  is  almost  superfluous  to 
say  that  there  never  was  or  could  be  a  Mark  Tapley,  or  a  Sam  Weller.  We  put 
up  with  these  impossibilities  and  delight  in  them,  because  they  are  so  amusing 
and  so  full  of  fantastic  humor.  But  Mrs.  Poyser  lives,  and  I  have  met  Aunt 
Glegg  often  ;  and  poor  Mrs.  Tulliver's  cares  and  hopes,  and  little  fears,  and  piti- 
ful reasonings,  are  animating  scores  of  Mrs.  Tullivers  all  over  England  to-day. 
I  would  propose  a  safe  and  easy  test  to  any  American  or  other  "  foreigner  "  (I 
am  supposing  myself  now  again  in  England),  who  is  curious  to  know  how  much 


140  "GEORGE  ELIOT"  AND  GEORGE  LEWES. 

he  understands  of  the  English  character.  Let  him  read  any  of  George  Eliot's 
novels — even  "  Felix  Holt,"  which  is  so  decidedly  inferior  to  the  rest — and  if  he 
fails  to  follow,  with  thorough  appreciation,  the  talk  and  the  ways  of  the  Poysers 
and  such  like  personages,  he  may  be  assured  he  does  not  understand  one  great 
phase  of  English  life. 

Are  these  novels  popular  in  England  ?  Educated  public  opinion,  I  repeat, 
ranks  them  higher  than  the  novels  of  any  other  living  author.  But  they  are 
not  popular — that  is,  as  Wilkie  Collins  or  Miss  Braddon  is  popular ;  and  I  do 
not  mean  to  say  anything  slighting  of  either  Wilkie  Collins  or  Miss  Braddon, 
both  of  whom  I  think  possess  very  great  talents,  and  have  been  treated  with 
quite  too  much  of  the  de  haut  en  has  mood  of  the  great  critics.  George  El- 
iot's novels  certainly  are  not  run  after  and  devoured  by  the  average  circulating 
library  readers,  as  "The  Woman  in  White,"  and  "  Lady  Audley's  Secret"  were. 
She  has,  of  course,  nothing  like  the  number  of  readers  who  follow  Charles  Dic- 
kens ;  nor  even,  I  should  say,  nearly  as  many  as  Anthony  Trollope.  When  "  Ro- 
mola,"  which  the  "  Saturday  Review  "  justly  pronounced  to  be,  if  not  the  great- 
est, certainly  the  noblest  romance  of  modern  days,  was  being  published  as  a 
serial  in  the  "  Cornhill  Magazine,"  it  was  comparatively  a  failure,  in  the  circulat- 
ing library  sense  ;  and  even  when  it  appeared  in  its  complete  form,  and  the  pub- 
lic could  better  appreciate  its  artistic  perfection,  it  was  anything  but  a  splendid 
success,  as  regarded  from  the  publisher's  point  of  view.  Perhaps  this  may  be 
partly  accounted  for  by  the  nature  of  the  subject,  the  scene  and  the  time ;  but 
even  the  warmest  admirer  of  George  Eliot  may  freely  admit  that  "Romola" 
lacks  a  little  of  that  passionate  heat  which  is  needed  to  make  a  writer  of  fiction 
thoroughly  popular.  When  a  statue  of  pure  and  perfect  marble  attracts  as  great 
a  crowd  of  gazers  as  a  glowing  picture,  then  a  novel  like  "  Romola"  will  have 
as  many  admirers  as  a  novel  like  "  Consuelo  "  or  "  Villette." 

I  am  not  one  of  the  admirers  of  George  Eliot  who  regret  that  she  ventured 
on  the  production  of  a  long  poem.  I  think  "  The  Spanish  Gypsy  "  a  true  and 
a  fine  poem,  although  I  do  not  place  it  so  high  in  artistic  rank  as  the  best  of  the 
author's  prose  writings.  But  I  believe  it  to  be  the  greatest  story  in  verse  ever 
produced  by  an  Englishwoman.  This  is  not,  perhaps,  very  high  praise,  for 
Englishwomen  have  seldom  done  much  in  the  higher  fields  of  poetry  ;  but  we 
have  "Aurora  Leigh  ;  "  and  I  think  "  The  Spanish  Gypsy,"  on  the  whole,  a  finer 
piece  of  work.  Most  of  our  English  critics  fell  to  discussing  the  question 
whether  "  The  Spanish  Gypsy  "  was  to  be  regarded  as  poetry  at  all,  or  only  as  a 
story  put  into  verse  ;  and  in  this  futile  and  vexatious  controversy  the  artistic 
value  uf  the  work  itself  almost  escaped  analysis.  I  own  that  I  think  criticism 
shows  to  little  advantage  when  it  occupies  itself  in  considering  whether  a  work 
of  art  "is  to  be  called  by  this  name  or  that ;  and  I  am  rather  impatient  of  the  critic 
who  comes  with  his  canons  of  artrhis  Thirty-Nine  articles  of  literary  dogma,  and 
judges  a  book,  not  by  what  it  is  in  itself,  but  by  the  answer  it  gives  to  his  self-in- 
vented catechism.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  art  of  man  ever  can  invent — I  know 
it  never  has  invented — any  set  of  rules  or  formulas  by  which  you  can  decide,  off- 
hand and  with  certainty,  that  a  great  story  in  verse,  which  you  admit  to  have  pow- 
er and  beauty  and  pathos  and  melody,  does  not  belong  to  true  poetry.  One  great 
school  of  critics  discovered,  by  the  application  of  such  high  rules  and  canons 
that  Shakespeare,  though  a  great  genius  was  not  a  great  poet ;  a  later  school 
made  a  similar  discovery  with  regard  to  Schiller  ;  a  certain  body  of  critics  now 
say  the  same  of  Byron.  I  don't  think  it  matters  much  what  you  call  the  work. 
"The  Spanish  Gypsy"  has  imagination  and  beauty;  it  has  exquisite  pictures 
and  lofty  thoughts ;  it  has  melody  and  music.  Admitting  this  much,  and  the 


"GEORGE  ELIOT"  AND  GEORGE  LEWES.  141 

most  depreciating  criiies  <.!id  admit  it,  1  think  it  hardly  worth  considering  what 
name  we  are  to  apply  to  the  book.  Such,  however,  was  the  soit  of  controversy 
in  which  all  deep  and  true  consideration  of  the  artistic  value  of  "  The  Spanish 
Gvpsy  "  evaporated.  I  am  not  sorry  Mrs.  Lewes  published  the  poem;  but  I 
am  sorry  she  put  her  literary  name  to  it  in  the  first  instance.  Had  it  appeared 
anonymously  it  would  have  astonished  and  delighted  the  world.  But  people 
compared  "  The  Spanii.il  Gypsy"  with  the  author's  prose  works,  and  were  dis- 
appointed because  the  woman  who  surpassed  Dickens  in  fiction  did  not  likewise 
surpass  Tennyson  and  Browning  in  poetry.  Thus,  and  in  no  other  sense,  was 
"  The  Spanish  Gypsy"  a  failure.  No  woman  had  written  anything  of  the  same 
kind  to  surpass  it ;  but  some  men,  even  of  our  own  day,  had — and  no  man  of  our 
day  has  written  novels  which  excel  those  of  George  Eliot.  Mrs.  Lewes  will  prob- 
ably not  write  any  more  long  poems  ;  but  I  think  English  poetry  has  gained 
something  by  her  one  venture. 

Mrs.  Lewes's  mind  is  of  a  class  which,  however  varied  its  power,  is  not  fairly 
described  by  the  word  "versatile."  Versatility  is  a  smaller  kind  of  faculty,  a 
dexterity  of  intellect  and  capacity — the  property  of  a  mind  of  the  second  order. 
If  we  want  a  perfect  type  and  pattern  of  versatility,  we  may  find  it  very  close  to 
the  authoress  of  "  Silas  Marner,"  in  the  person  of  her  husband,  George  Henry 
Lewes.  What  man  of  our  day  has  done  so  many  things  and  done  them  so  well  ? 
He  is  the  biographer  of  Goethe  and  of  Robespierre  ;  he  has  compiled  the  "  His- 
tory of  Philosophy,"  in  which  he  has  something  really  his  own  to  say  of  every 
great  philosopher,  from  Thales  to  Schelling ;  he  has  translated  Spinoza ;  he  has 
published  various  scientific  works  ;  he  has  written  at  least  two  novels  ;  he  has 
made  one  of  the  most  successful  dramatic  adaptations  known  to  our  stage ;  he 
is  an  accomplished  theatrical  critic  ;  he  was  at  one  time  so  successful  as  an  ama- 
teur actor  that  he  seriously  contemplated  taking  to  the  stage  as  a  profession,  in 
the  full  conviction,  which  he  did  not  hesitate  frankly  to  avow,  that  he  was  des- 
tined to  be  the  successor  to  Macready.  He  did  actually  join  a  company  at  one 
of  the  Manchester  theatres,  and  perform  there  for  some  time  under  a  feigned 
name  ;  but  the  amount  of  encouragement  he  received  from  the  public  did  not 
stimulate  him  to  continue  on  the  boards,  although  I  believe  his  confidence  in  his 
own  capacity  to  succeed  Macready  remained  unshaken.  Mr.  Lewes  was  always 
remarkable  for  a  frank  and  fearless  self-conceit,  which,  by  its  very  sincerity  and 
audacity,  almost  disarmed  criticism.  Indeed,  I  do  not  suppose  any  man  less 
gifted  with  self-confidence  would  have  even  attempted  to  do  half  the  things  which 
George  Henry  Lewes  has  done  well.  Margaret  Fuller  was  very  unfavorably  im- 
pressed by  Lewes  when  she  met  him  at  Thomas  Carlyle's  house,  and  she  wrote 
of  him  contemptuously  and  angrily.  But  these  were  the  days  of  Lewes's  Bo- 
hemiamsm ;  days  of  an  audacity  and  a  self-conceit  unsubdued  as  yet  by  ex- 
perience and  the  world,  and  some  saddening  and  some  refining  influences  ;  and 
Margaret  Fuller  failed  to  appreciate  the  amount  of  intellect  and  manliness  that 
was  in  him.  Charlotte  Bronte",  on  the  other  hand,  was  quite  enthusiastic  about 
Lewes,  and  wrote  to  him  and  of  him  with  an  almost  amusing  veneration.  In- 
deed, he  is  a  man  of  ability  and  versatility  that  may  fairly  be  called  extraordi- 
nary. His  merit  is  not  that  he  has  written  books  on  a  great  variety  of  subjects. 
London  has  many  hack  writers  who  could  go  to  work  at  any  publisher's  order 
and  produce  successively  an  epic  poem,  a  novel,  a  treatise  on  the  philosophy  of 
the  conditioned,  a  handbook  of  astronomy,  a  farce,  a  life  of  Julius  Caesar,  a  his- 
tory of  African  explorations,  and  a  volume  of  sermons.  But  none  of  these  pro- 
ductions would  have  one  gleam  of  genuine  native  vitality  about  it.  The  moment 
;t  had  served  its  purpose  in  the  literary  market  it  would  go,  dead,  down  to  the 


142 


"GEORGE  ELIOT"  AND  GEORGE  LEWES. 


dead.  Lewes's  works  are  of  quite  a  different  style.  They  have  positive  merit 
and  value  of  their  own,  and  they  live.  It  was  a  characteristically  audacious  thing 
to  attempt  to  cram  the  history  of  philosophy  into  a  couple  of  medium-sized  vol- 
umes, polishing  off  each  philosopher  in  a  few  pages — draining  him,  plucking  out 
the  heart  of  his  mystery  and  his  system,  and  stowing  him  away  in  the  glass  jar 
designed  to  exhibit  him  to  an  edified  class  of  students.  But  it  must  be  avowed 
that  Lewes's  has  been  a  marvellously  clever  and  successful  attempt.  He  cer- 
tainly crumples  up  the  whole  science  of  metaphysics,  sweeps  away  transcenden- 
tal philosophy,  and  demolishes  a  priori  reasoning,  in  a  manner  which  strongly 
reminds  one  of  Arthur  Pendennis  upsetting,  in  a  dashing  criticism  and  on  the 
faith  of  an  hour's  reading  in  an  encyclopaedia,  some  great  scientific  theory  of 
which  he  had  never  heard  previously,  and  the  development  of  which  had  been 
the  life's  labor  of  a  sage.  But  Lewes  does,  somehow  or  other,  very  often  come 
to  a  right  conclusion,  and  measure  great  theories  and  men  with  accurate  estimate  ; 
and  the  work  is  immensely  interesting,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  anybody 
could  have  done  it  better.  His  "Life  of  Goethe"  5s  undoubtedly  a  very  suc- 
cessful, symmetrical,  and  comprehensive  piece  of  biography.  Some  of  his  sci- 
entific studies  have  a  genuine  value,  and  they  are  all  fascinating.  One  of  his 
pieces — adapted  from  the  French,  of  course,  as  most  so-called  English  pieces 
are — will  always  be  played  while  Charles  Mathews  lives,  or  while  there  are  ac- 
tors who  can  play  in  Charles  Mathews's  style.  I  wonder  whether  any  of  the 
readers  of  THE  GALAXY  read,  or  having  read  remember,  Lewes's  novels  ?  I  only 
recollect  two  of  them,  and  I  do  not  know  whether  he  wrote  any  others.  One 
was  called  "  Ranthorpe,"  and  it  had,  in  its  day,  quite  a  sort  of  success.  How  long 
ago  was  it  published  ?  Fully  twenty  years,  I  should  think  :  I  remember  quite 
well  being  thrown  into  youthful  raptures  with  it  at  the  time.  But  I  do  not  go 
upon  my  boyish  admiration  for  it.  I  came  across  it  somewhere  much  more  re- 
cently, and  read  it  through.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  inflation,  and  audacity, 
and  nonsense  in  it ;  but  at  the  same  time  it  showed  more  of  brains  and  artistic 
impulse  and  constructive  power  than  nine  out  of  every  ten  novels  published  in 
England  to-day.  It  was  all  about  a  young  poet,  who  came  to  London  and  made, 
for  a  moment,  a  great  success,  and  was  dazzled  by  it,  and  became  intoxicated 
with  love  for  a  lustrous  beauty  of  high  rank,  who  only  played  with  him  ;  and  how 
he  forgot,  for  a  time,  the  modest,  delightful,  simple  girl  to  whom  he  was  pledged 
at  home ;  and  how  he  did  not  get  on,  and  the  public  and  the  salons  grew  tired 
of  him  ;  and  he  became  miserable,  and  was  going  to  drown  himself  (I  think),  but 
was  prevented  by  some  wise  and  timely  person  ;  and  how,  of  course,  it  all  came 
right  in  the  end,  and  he  was  redeemed.  This  outline,  probably,  will  not  suggest 
much  of  originality  to  any  reader ;  but  there  was  a  great  deal  of  freshness  and 
thought  in  the  book,  some  of  the  incidents  and  one  or  two  of  the  characters  had 
a  flavor  of  originality  about  them  ;  and  the  style  was,  for  the  most  part,  animated 
and  attractive.  It  was  the  work  of  a  man  of  brains,  and  culture,  and  taste  ;  and 
one  felt  this  all  through,  and  was  not  ashamed  of  the  time  spent  in  reading  it. 
The  other  of  Lewes's  novels  was  called  "Rose,  Blanche,  and  Violet."  It 
charmed  me  a  good  deal  when  I  read  it ;  but  I  have  not  read  it  lately,  and  so  I 
forbear  giving  any  decided  opinion  as  to  its  merits.  It  is,  of  course,  quite  set- 
tled now  that  George  Lewes  had  not  in  him  the  materials  to  make  a  successful 
novelist ;  but  men  of  far  less  talent  have  produced  far  worse  novels  than  his, 
and  been,  in  their  way,  successful. 

Lewes  first  became  prominent  in  literature  as  a  contributor  to  the  "  Leader," 
a  very  remarkable  weekly  organ  of  advanced  opinions  on  all  questions,  which 
was  started  in  London  seventeen  or  eighteen  years  ago,  and  died,  after  much 


"GEORGE  ELIOT"  AND  GEORGE  LEWES.  1-13 

flickering  and  lingering,  in  1861  or  thereabouts.  The  "  Leader,"  in  its  early 
and  best  days,  fairly  sparkled  all  over  with  talent,  originality  and  audacity.  It 
was  to  extreme  philosophical  radicalism,  (with  a  dash  of  something  like  atheism) 
what  the  "  Saturday  Review  "  now  is  to  cultured  swelldom  and  Belgravian  Sad- 
duceeism.  Miss  Martineau  wrote  for  it.  Lewes  and  Thornton  Hunt  (they 
were  then  intimates,  unfortunately  for  Lewes)  were  among  its  principal  contri- 
butors ;  Edward  Whitty  flung  over  its  pages  the  brilliant  eccentric  light  which 
was  destined  to  immature  and  melancholy  extinction.  Lewes's  theatrical  criti- 
cisms, which  he  used  to  sign  "Vivian,"  were  inimitable  in  their  vivacity,  their 
wit,  and  their  keenness,  even  when  their  soundness  of  judgment  was  most  open  to 
question.  Poor  Charles  Kean  was  an  especial  object  of  Lewes's  detestation, 
and  was  accordingly  pelted  and  peppered  with  torturingly  clever  and  piquant 
pasquinades  in  the  form  of  criticism.  Lewes  has  got  wonderfully  sober  and 
grave  in  style  since  those  wild  days,  and  his  occasional  contributions  in  the 
shape  of  dramatic  criticism  to  the  "  Pall  Mall  Gazette  "  are  doubtless  more  gen- 
erally accurate,  are  certainly  much  more  thoughtful,  but  are  far  less  amusing 
than  the  admirable  fooling  of  days  gone  by.  It  was  in  the  "  Leader,"  I  think, 
that  Lewes  carried  on  his  famous  controversy  with  Charles  Dickens  on  the  pos- 
sibility of  such  spontaneous  combustion  as  that  of  the  old  brute  in  "Bleak 
House,"  and  it  was  in  the  "  Leader"  that  he  made  an  equally  famous  exposure 
of  a  sham  spiritualist  medium,  about  whom  London  was  then  much  agitated. 
The  "  Leader,"  probably,  never  paid ;  it  was  far  too  iconoclastic  and  eccen- 
tric to  be  a  commercial  success,  but  it  made  quite  a  mark  and  will  always  be  a 
memory.  It  did  not  succeed  in  its  object;  but,  like  the  arrow  of  the  hero  in 
Virgil,  it  left  a  long  line  of  sparkles  and  light  behind  it.  Lewes  has  abandoned 
Bohemia  long  since,  and  Edward  Whitty  is  dead,  and  Thornton  Hunt  has  come 
to  nothing — and  there  is  another  "Leader"  now  in  London  which  bears  about 
as  much  resemblance  to  the  original  and  real  "Leader"  as  Richard  Cromwell 
did  to  Oliver,  or  Charles  Kean  to  Edmund. 

Bohemianism,  and  novel-writing,  and  amateur  acting,  and  persiflage,  and 
epigram,  are  all  gone  by  now  with  Lewes.  He  has  settled  into  a  grave  and 
steady  writer,  for  the  most  part  of  late  confining  himself  to  scientific  subjects. 
A  few  years  ago  he  started  the  "  Fortnightly  Review,"  in  the  hope  of  establish- 
ing in  England  a  counterpart  of  the  "  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes."  The  first  num- 
ber was  enriched  by  one  of  the  most  thoughtful,  subtle,  beautiful  essays  lately 
contributed  to  literature  ;  and  it  bore  the  signature  of  George  Eliot.  Lewes 
himself  wrote  a  series  of  essays  on  "The  Principles  of  Success  in  Literature." 
very  good,  very  sound,  but  not  very  lively  reading.  A  great  English  novelist 
was  pleased  graciously  to  say,  apropos  of  these  essays,  "Success  in  literature  ! 
What  does  Lewes  know  about  success  in  literature  ?  "  and  the  small  devotees  of 
the  great  successful  novelist  laughed  and  repeated  the  joke.  It  is  certain  that 
the  "Fortnightly  Review"  was  not  a  success  under  the  editorship  of  George 
Henry  Lewes  ;  and  people  sa?d,  I  do  not  know  how  truly,  that  a  good  deal  of  the 
nobly-earned  money  paid  for  "  Silas  Marner "  and  the  "Mill  on  the  Floss" 
disappeared  in  the  attempt  to  erect  a  British  "  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes."  The 
"  Fortnightly  "  lives  still,  and  is  called  "  Fortnightly  "  still,  although  it  now  only 
comes  out  once  a  month,  but  Lewes  has  long  ceased  to  edit  it.  I  think  the 
present  editor,  John  Morley,  a  young  man  of  great  ability  and  promise,  is  bettei 
suited  for  the  work  than  Lewes  was — indeed  I  doubt  whether  Lewes,  with  all  his 
varied  gifts  and  acquirements,  possesses  the  peculiar  qualities  which  make  a 
man  a  genuine  editor.  But  the  difference  between  wild  Hal,  the  Prince  of 
G.idshill.  nnd  grave,  wise  Henry  the  Fifth.  cmiK!  h:mlly  be  greater  than  that  be- 


144  "GEORGE  ELIOT"  AND  GEORGE  LEWES. 

tween  the  Vivian  of  the  "  Leader  "  and  the  late  editor  of  the  solemn,  ponder- 
ous "Fortnightly  Review." 

Lewes  wrote  atone  time  a  great  deal  for  the  "Westminster  Review."  It 
was  during  his  connection  with  it  that  he  became  acquainted,  at  Dr.  Chapman's 
house,  with  Marion  Evans.  There  was  a  great  similarity  between  their  tastes. 
Both  loved  the  study  of  languages,  and  of  philosophical  thought,  and  of  litera- 
ture and  science  generally.  Both  were  splendid  in  conversation,  brilliant  in  ep- 
igram ;  both  loved  music  and  were  intensely  susceptible  to  its  influence.  The 
mind  of  the  woman  was,  I  need  hardly  say,  far  the  stronger,  wider,  deeper  of 
the  two  ;  but  the  affinity  was  clear  and  close.  A  great  misfortune  had  fallen  on 
Lewes  ;  and  he  was  probably  in  that  condition  of  mind  which  makes  a  man  not 
unlikely  to  lose  his  faith  in  everything  and  drift  into  hopeless,  perpetual  cyni- 
cism. From  this,  if  this  impended  over  him,  Lewes  was  saved  by  his  inter- 
course with  the  rarely-gifted  woman  he  had  met  in  so  timely  an  hour.  The  re- 
sult is,  as  every  one  knows,  a  companionship  and  union  unusual  indeed  in  lit- 
erary life.  Very  seldom  has  a  distinguished  author  had  for  wife  a  distinguished 
authoress,  or  vice  versa;  indeed,  it  used  to  be  one  of  the  dear  delightful  theories 
of  blockheads  that  such  unions,  if  they  could  take  place,  would  be  miserably 
unhappy.  This  theory,  so  soothing  to  complacent  dulness,  was  hardly  borne 
out  in  the  instance  of  the  Brownings  ;  it  is  just  as  little  corroborated  by  the  ex- 
ample of  "George  Eliot"  and  George  Lewes.  I  believe,  too,  the  example  of 
George  Eliot  is  highly  unsatisfactory  to  the  devotees  of  that  other  theory,  so 
long  cherished  by  dolts  of  both  sexes,  that  a  woman  of  talent  and  culture  can 
never  do  anything  in  the  way  of  mending  or  making,  of  cooking  a  chop  or  or- 
dering a  household.  People  tell  us  they  can  trace  th-e  influence  of  Levves's  va- 
ried scholarship  and  critical  judgment  in  the  novels  of  George  Eliot.  It  is 
hardly  possible  to  doubt  that  some  such  influence  must  be  there,  but  I  cer- 
tainly never  saw  it  anywhere  distinctly  and  openly  evident.  It  would  be  poor 
art  which  allowed  a  thin  stream  of  Lewes  to  be  seen  sparkling  through  the  broad, 
deep,  luminous  lake  which  mirrors  the  genius  of  George  Eliot.  I  am,  however, 
rather  inclined  to  fancy  that  Lewes,  in  general,  abstains  from  critical  surveillance 
or  restraint  over  the  productions  of  his  greater  companion,  believing,  perhaps, 
that  the  higher  mind  had  better  be  a  law  to  itself.  If  this  be  so,  I  think  it  is  a 
wholesome  principle  pushed  sometimes  too  far,  for  one  can  hardly  believe  that 
the  calm  judgment  of  any  sincere  and  qualified  adviser  would  not  have  discour- 
aged and  condemned  the  painful,  unnecessary  underplot  of  past  intrigue  and 
sin  which  is  so  great  a  blot  in  "  Felix  Holt,"  or  suggested  a  rapider  dramatic 
movement  in  some  passages  of  "  The  Spanish  Gypsy."  Lewes  once  wrote  to 
Charlotte  Bronte'  that  he  would  rather  be  the  author  of  Miss  Austen's  stories 
than  of  the  whole  of  the  Waverley  Novels.  I  certainly  do  not  agree  with  him 
in  that  opinion  ;  but  it  is  strange  that  one  who  held  it  should  not  have  endeav- 
ored to  prevent  an  authoress  greater  than  Miss  Austen,  and  far  more  directly 
under  his  influence  than  Charlotte  Bronte",  from  sinking,  in  one  or  two  instances, 
into  faults  which  neither  Miss  Austen  nor  Miss  Bronte'  would  ever  have  com- 
mitted. Many  things  are  strange  about  this  literary  and  domestic  companion- 
ship ;  this  comparatively  trifling  fact  seems  to  me  not  the  least  strange. 

Finally  let  me  say  that  I  fully  expect  George  Eliot  yet  to  give  to  the  world 
some  work  of  art  even  greater  than  any  she  has  already  produced.  She  is  not 
a  woman  to  close  with  even  a  comparative  failure.  Her  maxim,  I  feel  confi- 
dent, would  be  that  of  the  Emperor  Napoleon — offer  terms  of  peace  and  repose 
after  a  great  victory  ;  never  otherwise. 


GEORGE   SAND. 


WE  are  all  of  us  probably  inclined  now  and  then  to  waste  a  little  time  fa 
vaguely  speculating  on  what  might  have  happened  if  this  or  that  par- 
ticular event  had  not  given  a  special  direction  to  the  career  of  some  great  man  or 
woman.  If  there  had  been  an  inch  of  difference  in  the  size  of  Cleopatra's  nose  ; 
if  Hannibal  had  not  lingered  at  Capua ;  if  Cromwell  had  carried  out  his  idea  of 
emigration  ;  if  Napoleon  Bonaparte  had  taken  service  under  the  Turk — and  so 
on  through  all  the  old  familiar  illustrations  dear  to  the  minor  essayist  and  the  de- 
bating society.  I  have  sometimes  felt  tempted  thus  to  lose  myself  in  speculating 
on  what  might  have  happened  if  the  woman  whom  all  the  world  knows  as  George 
Sand  had  been  happily  married  in  her  youth  to  the  husband  of  her  choice. 
Would  she  ever  have  taken  to  literature  at  all  ?  Would  she,  loving  as  she  does, 
and  as  Frenchwomen  so  rarely  do,  the  changing  face  of  inanimate  nature — the 
fields,  the  flowers,  and  the  brooks — have  lived  a  peaceful  and  obscure  life  in 
some  happy  country  place,  and  been  content  with  home,  and  family,  and  love, 
and  never  thought  of  fame  ?  Or  if,  thus  happily  married,  she  still  had  allowed 
her  genius  to  find  an  expression  in  literature,  would  she  have  written  books  with 
no  passionate  purpose  in  them — books  which  might  have  seemed  like  those  of  a 
good  Miss  Mulock  made  perfect — books  which  Podsnap  might  have  read  with 
approval  and  put  without  a  scruple  into  the  hands  of  that  modest  young  person, 
his  daughter  ?  Certainly  one  cannot  but  think  that  a  different  kind  of  early  life 
would  have  given  a  quite  different  complexion  to  the  literary  individuality  of 
George  Sand. 

Buiwer  Lytton,  in  one  of  his  novels,  insists  that  true  genius  is  always  quite  in- 
dependent of  the  individual  sufferings  or  joys  of  its  possessor,  and  describes  some 
inspired  youth  in  the  novel  as  sitting  down  while  sorrow  is  in  his  heart  and  hun- 
ger gnawing  at  his  vitals,  to  throw  off  a  sparkling  and  gladsome  little  fairy  tale. 
Now  this  is  undoubtedly  true  in  general  of  any  high  order  of  genius  ;  but  there 
are  at  least  some  great  and  striking  exceptions.  Rousseau  and  Byron  are,  in 
modern  days,  remarkable  illustrations  of  genius,  admittedly  of  a  very  high  rank, 
governed  and  guided  almost  wholly  by  the  individual  fortunes  of  the  men  them- 
selves. So  too  must  we  speak  of  the  genius  of  George  Sand.  Not  Rousseau, 
not  even  Byron,  was  in  this  sense  more  egotistic  than  the  woman  who  broke  the 
chains  of  her  ill-assorted  marriage  with  a  crash  that  made  its  echoes  heard  at 
last  in  every  civilized  country  in  the  world.  Just  as  people  are  constantly  quot- 
ing nous  avons  changt  tout  cela  who  never  read  a  page  of  Moliere,  or  pour  en- 
courager  les  autres  without  even  being  aware  that  there  is  a  story  of  Voltaire's 
called  "  Candide,"  so  there  have  been  thousands  of  passionate  protests  uttered 
in  America  and  Europe  for  the  last  twenty  years  by  people  who  never  saw  a  vol- 
ume of  George  Sand,  and  yet  are  only  echoing  her  sentiments  and  even  repeat- 
ing her  words. 

In  a  former  number  of  THE  GALAXY  I  expressed  casually  the  opinion  that 
George  Sand  is  probably  the  most  influential  writer  of  our  day.  I  am  still,  and 
deliberately,  of  the  same  opinion.  It  must  be  remembered  that  very  few  English 
or  American  authors  have  any  wide  or  deep  influence  over  peoples  who  do  not 
speak  English.  Even  of  the  very  greatest  authors  this  is  true.  Compare,  for 
example,  the  literary  dominion  of  Shakespeare  with  that  of  Cervantes.  All  na- 


146  GEORGE  SAND. 

tions  who  read  Shakespeare  read  Cervantes :  in  Stratford-upon-Avon  itself  Don 
Quixote  is  probably  as  familiar  a  figure  in  people's  minds  as  Fafstaff;  but 
Shakespeare  is  little  known  indeed  to  the  vast  majority  of  readers  in  the  country 
of  Cervantes,  in  the  land  of  Dante,  or  in  that  of  Racine  and  Victor  Hugo.  In 
something  of  the  same  way  we  may  compare  the  influence  of  George  Sand  with 
that  of  even  the  greatest  living  authors  of  England  and  America.  What  influ- 
ence has  Charles  Dickens  or  George  Eliot  outside  the  range  of  the  English 
tongue  ?  But  George  Sand's  genius  has  been  felt  as  a  power  in  every  country 
of  the  world  where  people  read  any  manner  of  books.  It  has  been  felt  almost 
as  Rousseau's  once  was  felt ;  it  has  aroused  anger,  terror,  pity,  or  wild  and  rap- 
turous excitement  and  admiration  ;  it  has  rallied  around  it  every  instinct  in  man 
or  woman  which  is  revolutionary  ;  it  has  ranged  against  it  all  that  is  conservative. 
It  is  not  so  much  a  literary  influence  as  a  great  disorganizing  force,  riving  the 
rocks  of  custom,  resolving  into  their  original  elements  the  social  combinations 
which  tradition  and  convention  would  declare  to  be  indissoluble.  I  am  not  now 
speaking  merely  of  the  sentiments  which  George  Sand  does  or  did  entertain  on 
the  subject  of  marriage.  Divested  of  all  startling  effects  and  thrilling  dramatic 
illustrations,  these  sentiments  probably  amounted  to  nothing  more  dreadful  than 
the  belief  that  an  unwedded  union  between  two  people  who  love  and  are  true  to 
each  other  is  less  immoral  than  the  legal  marriage  of  two  uncongenial  creatures 
who  do  not  love  and  probably  are  not  true  to  each  other.  But  the  grand,  revo- 
lutionary idea  which  George  Sand  announced  was  that  of  the  social  indepen- 
dence and  equality  of  woman — the  principle  that  woman  is  not  made  for  man  in 
any  other  sense  than  as  man  is  made  for  woman.  For  the  first  time  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  world  woman  spoke  out  for  herself  with  a  voice  as  powerful  as  that  of 
man.  For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  world  woman  spoke  out  as  woman, 
not  as  the  servant,  the  satellite,  the  pupil,  the  plaything,  or  the  goddess  of  man. 
Now  I  intend  at  present  to  write  of  George  Sand  rather  as  an  individual,  or 
an  influence,  than  as  the  author  of  certain  works  of  fiction.  Criticism  would  now 
be  superfluously  bestowed  on  the  literary  merits  and  peculiarities  of  the  great 
woman  whose  astonishing  intellectual  activity  has  never  ceased  to  produce,  dur- 
ing the  last  thirty  years,  works  which  take  already  a  classical  place  in  French 
literature.  If  any  reputation  of  our  day  may  be  looked  upon  as  established,  we 
may  thus  regard  the  reputation  of  George  Sand.  She  is,  beyond  comparison, 
the  greatest  living  novelist  of  France.  She  has  won  this  position  by  the  most 
legitimate  application  of  the  gifts  of  an  artist.  With  all  her  marvellous  fecundity, 
she  has  hardly  ever  given  to  the  world  any  work  which  does  not  seem  at  least 
to  have  been  the  subject  of  the  most  elaborate  and  patient  care.  The  greatest 
temptation  which  tries  a  story-teller  is  perhaps  the  temptation  to  rely  on  the  at- 
tractiveness of  story-telling,  and  to  pay  little  or  no  attention  to  style.  Walter 
Scott's  prose,  for  example,  if  regarded  as  mere  prose,  is  rambling,  irregular,  and 
almost  worthless.  Dickens's  prose  is  as  bad  a  model  for  imitation  as  a  musical 
performance  which  is  out  of  tune.  Of  course,  I  need  hardly  say  that  attention 
to  style  is  almost  as  characteristic  of  French  authors  in  general,  as  the  lack  of  it 
is  characteristic  of  English  authors  ;  but  even  in  France,  the  prose  of  George 
Sand  stands  out  conspicuous  for  its  wonderful  expressiveness  and  force,  its  al- 
most perfect  beauty.  Then  of  all  modern  French  authors — I  might  perhaps  say 
of  all  modern  novelists  of  any  country — George  Sand  has  added  to  fiction,  has 
annexed  from  the  worlds  of  reality  and  of  imagination,  the  greatest  number  of 
original  characters — of  what  Emerson  calls  new  organic  creations.  Moreover, 
George  Sand  is,  after  Rousseau,  the  one  only  great  French  author  who  has  looked 


GEORGE  SAND  147 

directly  and  lovingly  into  the  face  of  Nature,  and  learned  the  secrets  which  skies 
and  waters,  fields  and  lanes,  can  teach  to  the  heart  that  loves  them.  Gifts  such  a* 
these  have  won  her  the  almost  unrivalled  place  which  she  holds  in  living  liter- 
ature, and  she  has  conquered  at  last  even  the  public  opinion  which  once  detested 
and  proscribed  her.  I  could  therefore  hope  to  add  nothing  to  what  has  been  al- 
ready said  by  criticism  in  regard  to  her  merits  as  a  novelist.  Indeed,  I  think 
it  probable  that  the  majority  of  readers  in  this  country  know  more  of  George 
Sand  through  the  interpretation  of  the  critics  than  through  the  pages  of  her 
books.  And  in  her  case  criticism  is  so  nearly  unanimous  as  to  her  literary 
merits,  that  I  may  safely  assume  the  public  in  general  to  have  in  their  minds  a 
just  recognition  of  her  position  as  a  novelist.  My  object  is  rather  to  say  some- 
thing about  the  place  which  George  Sand  has  taken  as  a  social  revolutionist, 
about  the  influence  she  has  so  long  exercised  over  the  world,  and  about  the 
woman  herself.  For  she  is  assuredly  the  greatest  champion  of  woman's  rights, 
in  one  sense,  that  the  world  has  ever  seen  ;  and  she  is,  on  the  other  hand,  the  one 
woman  out  of  all  the  world  who  has  been  most  commonly  pointed  to  as  the 
appalling  example  to  scare  doubtful  and  fluttering  womanhood  back  into  its 
sheepfold  of  submissiveness  and  conventionality.  There  is  hardly  a  woman's 
heart  anywhere  in  the  civilized  world  which  has  not  felt  the  vibration  of  George 
Sand's  thrilling  voice.  Women  who  never  saw  one  of  her  books,  nay,  who  never 
heard  even  her  nom  de plume,  have  been  stirred  by  emotions  of  doubt  or  fear  or 
repining  or  ambition,  which  they  never  would  have  known  but  for  George 
Sand,  and  perhaps  but  for  George  Sand's  uncongenial  marriage.  For  indeed 
there  is  not  now,  and  has  not  been  for  twenty  years,  I  venture  to  think,  a  single 
"revolutionary"  idea,  as  slow  and  steady-going  people  would  call  it,  afloat  any- 
where in  Europe  or  America,  on  the  subject  of  woman's  relations  to  man,  so- 
ciety, and  destiny,  which  is  not  due  immediately  to  the  influence  of  George  Sand, 
and  to  the  influence  of  George  Sand's  unhappy  marriage  upon  George  Sand 
herself. 

The  world  has  of  late  years  grown  used  to  this  extraordinary  woman,  and 
has  lost  much  of  the  wonder  and  terror  with  which  it  once  regarded  her.  I  can 
quite  remember — younger  people  than  I  can  remember — the  time  when  all  good 
and  proper  personages  in  England  regarded  the  authoress  of  "  Indiana  "  as  a 
sort  of  feminine  fiend,  endowed  with  a  hideous  power  for  the  destruction  of  souls 
and  an  inextinguishable  thirst  for  the  slaughter  of  virtuous  beliefs.  I  fancy  a 
good  deal  of  this  sentiment  was  due  to  the  fearful  reports  wafted  across  the 
seas,  that  this  terrible  woman  had  not  merely  repudiated  the  marriage  bond, 
but  had  actually  put  off  the  garments  sacred  to  womanhood.  That  George  Sand 
appeared  in  men's  clothes  was  an  outrage  upon  consecrated  proprieties  far 
more  astonishing  than  any  theoretical  onslaught  upon  old  opinions  could  be. 
Reformers  indeed  should  always,  if  they  are  wise  in  their  generation,  have  a 
care  of  the  proprieties.  Many  worthy  people  can  listen  with  comparative  forti- 
tude when  sacred  and  eternal  truths  are  assailed,  who  are  stricken  with  horror 
when  the  ark  of  propriety  is  never  so  lightly  touched.  George  Sand's  pantaloons 
were  therefore  regarded  as  the  most  appalling  illustration  of  George  Sand's 
wickedness.  I  well  remember  what  excitement,  scandal,  and  horror  were  created 
in  the  provincial  town  where  I  lived  some  twenty  years  ago,  when  the  editor  of 
a  local  Panjandrum  (to  borrow  Mr.  Trollope's  word)  insulted  the  feelings  and 
the  morals  of  his  constituents  and  subscribers  by  polluting  his  pages  with  a 
translation  from  one  of  George  Sand's  shorter  novels.  Ah  me,  the  little  novel 
might,  so  far  as  morality  was  concerned,  have  been  written  every  word  by 


148  GEORGE  SAND. 

Miss  Phelps,  or  the  authoress  of  the  "Heir  of  RedclifFe "  ;  it  had  not  a  word, 
from  beginning  to  end,  which  might  not  have  been  read  out  to  a  Sunday  school 
of  girls  ;  the  translation  was  made  by  a  woman  of  the  purest  soul,  and  in 
her  own  locality  the  highest  name  ;  and  yet  how  virtue  did  shriek  out  against 
the  publication  !  The  editor  persevered  in  the  publishing  of  the  novel,  spurred 
on  to  boldness  by  some  of  his  very  young  and  therefore  fearless  coadjutors, 
who  thought  it  delightful  to  confront  public  opinion,  and  liked  the  notion 
of  the  stars  in  their  courses  fighting  against  Sisera,  and  Sisera  not  being  dis- 
mayed. That  charming,  tender,  touching  little  story  !  I  would  submit  it  to- 
day cheerfully  to  the  verdict  of  a  jury  of  matrons,  confident  that  it  would  be  de- 
clared a  fit  and  proper  publication.  But  at  that  time  it  was  enough  that  the 
story  bore  the  odious  name  of  George  Sand  ;  public  opinion  condemned  it,  and 
sent  the  magazine  which  ventured  to  translate  it  to  an  early  and  dishonored 
grave.  I  remember  reading  about  that  time  a  short  notice  of  George  Sand  by 
an  English  authoress  of  some  talent  and  culture,  in  which  the  Frenchwoman's 
novels  were  described  as  so  abominably  filthy,  that  even  the  denizens  of  the 
Paris  brothels  were  ashamed  to  be  caught  reading  them.  Now  this  declaration 
was  made  in  all  good  faith,  in  the  simple  good  faith  of  that  class  of  persons  who 
will  pass  wholesale  and  emphatic  judgment  upon  works  of  which  they  have  never 
read  a  single  page.  For  I  need  hardly  tell  any  intelligent  person  of  to-day,  that 
whatever  may  be  said  of  George  Sand's  doctrines,  she  is  no  more  open  to  the 
charge  of  indelicacy  than  the  authoress  of  "  Romola."  I  cannot  myself  remem- 
ber any  passage  in  George  Sand's  novels  which  can  be  called  indelicate  ;  and 
indeed  her  severest  and  most  hostile  critics  are  fond  of  saying,  not  without  a 
certain  justice,  that  one  of  the  worst  characteristics  of  her  works  is  the  delicacy 
and  beauty  of  her  style,  which  thus  commends  to  pure  and  innocent  minds  cer- 
tain doctrines  that,  broadly  stated,  would  repel  and  shock  them.  Were  I  one  of 
George  Sand's  inveterate  opponents,  this,  or  something  like  it,  is  the  ground  I 
would  take  up.  I  would  say:  "The  welfare  of  the  human  family  demands  that 
a  marriage,  legally  made,  shall  never  be  questioned  or  undone.  Marriage  is  not 
a  union  depending  on  love  or  congeniality,  or  any  such  condition.  It  is  just  as 
sncred  when  made  for  money,  or  for  ambition,  or  for  lust  of  the  flesh,  or  for  any 
oilier  pupose,  however  ignoble  and  base,  as  when  contracted  in  the  spirit  of  the 
purest  mutual  love.  Here  is  a  woman  of  great  power  and  daring  genius,  who 
says  that  the  essential  condition  of  marriage  is  love  and  natural  fitness  ;  that  a 
legal  union  of  man  and  woman  without  this  is  no  marriage  at  all,  but  a  detestable 
and  disgusting  sin.  Now  the  more  delicately,  modestly,  plausibly  she  can  put  this 
revolutionary  and  pernicious  doctrine,  the  more  dangerous  she  becomes,  and  the 
more  earnestly  we  ought  to  denounce  her."  This  was  in  fact  what  a  great  many 
persons  did  say  ;  and  the  protest  was  at  least  consistent  and  logical. 

But  horror  is  an  emotion  which  cannot  long  live  on  the  old  fuel,  and  even 
the  world  of  English  Philistinism  soon  ceased  to  regard  George  Sand  as  a  mere 
monster.  Any  one  now  taking  up  "  Indiana,"  for  example,  would  perhaps  find 
it  not  quite  easy  to  understand  how  the  book,  produced  such  an  effect.  Our 
novel-writing  women  of  to-day  commonly  feed  us  on  more  fiery  stuff  than  this. 
Not  to  speak  of  such  accomplished  artists  in  impurity  as  the  lady  who  calls  her- 
self Ouida,  and  one  or  two  others  of  the  same  school,  we  have  young  women 
only  just  promoted  from  pantalettes,  who  can  throw  you  off  such  glowing  chapters 
of  passion  and  young  desire  as  would  make  the  rhapsodies  of  "  Indiana"  seem 
very  feeble  milk-and-water  brewage  by  comparison.  Indeed,  except  for  some 
of  the  descriptions  in  the  opening  chapters,  I  fail  to  see  any  extraordinary  merit 


GEORGE  SAND.  149 

in  "  Indiana  "  ;  and  toward  the  end  it  seems  to  me  to  grow  verbose,  weak,  and 
tiresome.  "  Leone  Leoni  "  opens  with  one  of  the  finest  dramatic  outbursts  of 
emotion  known  to  the  literature  of  modern  fiction  ;  but  it  soon  wanders  away 
into  discursive  weakness,  and  only  just  toward  the  close  brightens  up  into  a 
burst  of  lurid  splendor.  It  is  not  those  which  I  may  call  the  questionable  nov- 
els of  George  Sand — the  novels  which  were  believed  to  illustrate  in  naked  and 
appalling  simplicity  her  doctrines  and  her  life — that  will  bear  up  her  fame  through 
succeeding  generations.  If  every  one  of  the  novels  which  thus  in  their  time 
drew  down  the  thunders  of  society's  denunciation  were  to  be  swept  into  the  wal- 
let wherein  Time,  according  to  Shakespeare,  carries  scraps  for  oblivion,  George 
Sand  would  still  remain  where  she  now  is,  at  the  head  of  the  French  fiction  of 
her  day.  It  is  true,  as  Goethe  says,  that  "miracle-working  pictures  are  rarely 
works  of  art."  The  books  which  make  the  hair  of  the  respectable  public  stand 
on  end,  are  not  often  the  works  by  which  the  fame  of  the  author  is  preserved  for 
posterity. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  at  the  early  time  to  which  I  have  been  alluding,  little 
or  nothing  was  known  in  England  (or,  I  presume,  in  America)  of  the  real  life 
of  Aurore  Amandine  Dupin,  who  had  been  pleased  to  call  herself  George  Sand. 
People  knew,  or  had  heard,  that  she  had  separated  from  her  husband,  that  she 
had  written  novels  which  depreciated  the  sanctity  of  legal  marriage,  and  that  she 
sometimes  wore  male  costume  in  the  streets.  This  was  enough.  In  England, 
at  least,  we  were  ready  to  infer  any  enormity  regarding  a  woman  who  was  un- 
sound on  the  legal  marriage  question,  and  who  did  not  wear  petticoats.  What 
would  have  been  said  had  people  then  commonly  known  half  the  stories  which 
vrere  circulated  in  Paris  ;  half  the  extravagances  into  which  a  passionate  soul 
and  the  stimulus  of  sudden  emancipation  from  restraint  had  hurried  the  au- 
thoress of  "Indiana"  and  "  Lucrezia  Floriani "  ?  For  it  must  be  owned  that 
the  life  of  that  woman  was,  in  its  earlier  years,  a  strange  and  wild  phenomenon, 
hardly  to  be  comprehended  perhaps  by  American  or  English  natures.  I  have 
heard  George  Sand  bitterly  arraigned  even  by  persons  who  protested  that  they 
were  at  one  with  her  as  regards  the  early  sentiments  which  used  to  excite  such 
odium.  I  have  heard  her  described  by  such  as  a  sort  of  Lamia  of  literature  and 
passion  ;  a  creature  who  could  seize  some  noble,  generous,  youthful  heart,  drain 
it  of  its  love,  its  aspirations,  its  profoundest  emotions,  and  then  fling  it,  squeezed 
and  lifeless,  away.  I  have  heard  it  declared  that  George  Sand  made  "  copy  "  of 
the  fierce  and  passionate  loves  which  she  knew  so  well  how  to  awaken  and  to  fos- 
ter; that  she  distilled  the  life-blood  of  youth  to  obtain  the  mixture  out  of  which 
she  derived  her  inspiration.  The  charge  so  commonly  (I  think  unjustly)  made 
against  Goethe,  that  he  played  with  the  girlish  love  of  Bettina  and  of  others  in 
order  to  obtain  a  subject  for  literary  dissection,  is  vehemently  and  deliberately 
urged  in  an  aggravated  form,  in  many  aggravated  forms,  against  George  Sand. 
Where,  such  accusers  ask,  is  that  young  poet,  endowed  with  a  lyrical  genius 
rare  indeed  in  the  France  of  later  days,  that  young  poet  whose  imagination  was 
at  once  so  daring  and  so  subtle ;  who  might  have  been  Beranger  and  Heine  in 
one,  and  have  risen  to  an  atmosphere  in  which  neither  Be*ranger  nor  Heine  ever 
floated  ?  Where  is  he,  and  what  evil  influence  was  it  which  sapped  the  strength  of 
his  nature,  corrupted  his  genius,  and  prepared  for  him  a  premature  and  shameful 
grave  ?  Where  is  that  young  musician,  whose  pure,  tender,  and  lofty  strains 
sound  sweetly  and  sadly  in  the  ears,  as  the  very  hymn  and  music  of  the  Might- 
Ha\e-Been — where  is  he  now,  and  what  was  the  seductive  power  which  made  a 
plaything  of  him  and  then  flung  him  away  ?  Here  and  there  some  man  of 


150  GEORGE  SAND. 

stronger  mould  is  pointed  out  as  one  who  was  at  the  first  conquered,  and  then 
deceived  and  trifled  with,  but  who  ordered  his  stout  heart  to  bear,  and  rose  su- 
perior to  the  hour,  and  lived  to  retrieve  his  nature  and  make  himself  a  name  of 
respect ;  but  the  others,  of  more  sensitive  and  perhaps  finer  organizations,  are 
only  the  more  to  be  pitied  because  they  were  so  terribly  in  earnest.  Seldom, 
even  in  the  literary  history  of  modern  France,  has  there  been  a  more  strange  and 
shocking  episode  than  the  publication  by  George  Sand  ot  the  little  book  called 
"  Elle  et  Lui,"  and  the  rejoinder  to  it  by  Paul  de  Musset  called  "  Lui  et  Elle." 
I  can  hardly  be  accused  of  straying  into  the  regions  of  private  scandal  when  I 
speak  of  two  books  which  had  a  wide  circulation,  are  still  being  read,  and  may 
be  had,  I  presume,  in  any  New  York  bookstore  where  French  literature  is  sold. 
The  former  of  the  two  books,  "  She  and  He,"  was  a  story,  or  something  which 
purported  to  be  a  story,  by  George  Sand,  telling  of  two  ill-assorted  beings  whom 
fate  had  thrown  together  for  a  while,  and  of  whom  the  woman  was  all  tenderness, 
love,  patience,  the  man  all  egotism,  selfishness,  sensuousness,  and  eccentricity. 
The  point  of  the  whole  business  was  to  show  how  sublimely  the  woman  suffered, 
and  how  wantonly  the  man  flung  happiness  away.  Had  it  been  merely  a  piece 
of  fiction,  it  must  have  been  regarded  by  any  healthy  mind  as  a  morbid,  un- 
wholesome, disagreeable  production;  a  sin  of  the  highest  aesthetic  kind  against 
true  art,  which  must  always,  even  in  its  pathos  and  its  tragedy,  leave  on  the 
mind  exalted  and  delightful  impressions.  But  every  one  in  Paris  at  once  hailed 
the  story  as  a  chapter  of  autobiography,  as  the  author's  vindication  of  one  epi- 
sode in  her  own  career — a  vindication  at  the  expense  of  a  man  who  had  gone 
down,  ruined  and  lost,  to  an  early  grave.  Therefore  the  brother  of  the  dead 
man  flung  into  literature  a  little  book  called  "  He  and  She,"  in  which  a  story, 
substantially  the  same  in  its  outlines,  is  so  told  as  exactly  to  reverse  the  condi- 
tions under  which  the  verdict  of  public  opinion  was  sought.  Very  curious  in- 
deed was  the  manner  in  which  the  same  substance  of  facts  was  made  to  present 
the  two  principal  figures  with  complexions  and  characters  so  strangely  altered. 
In  the  woman's  book,  the  woman  was  made  the  patient,  loving,  suffering  victim  ; 
in  the  man's  reply,  this  same  woman  was  depicted  as  the  most  utterly  selfish 
and  depraved  creature  the  human  imagination  could  conceive.  Even  if  one  had 
no  other  means  whatever  of  forming  an  estimate  of  the  character  of  George 
Sand,  it  would  be  hardly  possible  to  accept  as  her  likeness  the  hideous  picture 
sketched  by  Paul  de  Musset.  No  woman,  I  am  glad  to  believe,  ever  existed  in 
real  life  so  utterly  selfish,  base,  and  wicked  as  his  bitter  pen  has  drawn.  I  must 
say  that  the  thing  is  very  cleverly  done.  The  picture  is  at  least  consistent  with 
itself.  As  a  character  in  romance  it  might  be  pronounced  original,  bold,  brilliant, 
and,  in  an  artistic  sense,  quite  natural.  There  is  something  thoroughly  French 
in  the  easy  and  delicate  force  of  the  final  touch  with  which  de  Musset  dismisses 
his  hideous  subject.  Having  sketched  this  woman  in  tints  that  seem  to  flame 
across  the  eyes  of  the  reader  ;  having  described  with  wonderful  realism  and 
power  her  affectation,  her  deceit,  her  reckless  caprices,  her  base  and  cruel  co- 
quetries, her  devouring  wantonness,  her  soul-destroying  arts,  her  unutterable  self- 
ishness and  egotism;  having,  to  use  a  vulgar  phrase,  "turned  her  inside  out," 
and  told  her  story  backwards,  the  author  calmly  explains  that  the  hero  of  the 
narrative  in  his  dying  hour  called  his  brother  to  his  bedside,  and  enjoined  him,  if 
occasion  should  ever  arise,  if  the  partner  of  his  sin  should- ever  calumniate  him 
in  his  grave,  to  vindicate  his  memory  and  avenge  the  treason  practised  upon 
him.  "  Of  course,"  adds  the  narrator,  "  the  brother  made  the  promise— and  I 
have  since  heard  that  he  has  kept  his  word."  I  can  hardly  hope  to  convey  to 


GEORGE  SAND.  1C1 

the  reader  any  adequate  idea  of  the  effect  produced  on  the  mind  by  these  few 
simple  words  of  compressed,  whispered  hatred  and  triumph,  closing  a  philippic, 
or  a  revelation,  or  a  libel  of  such  extraordinary  bitterness  and  ferocity.  The  whole 
episode  is,  I  believe  and  earnestly  hope,  without  precedent  or  imitation  in  literary 
controversy.  Never,  that  I  know  of,  has  a  living  woman  been  publicly  exhibited  to 
the  world  in  a  portraiture  so  hideous  as  that  which  Paul  de  Musset  drew  of 
George  Sand.  Never,  that  I  know  of,  has  any  woman  gone  so  near  to  deserving 
and  justifying  such  a  measure  of  retaliation. 

For  if  it  be  assumed — and  I  suppose  it  never  has  been  disputed — that  in 
writing  "Elle  et  Lui "  George  Sand  meant  to  describe  herself  and  Alfred  de 
Musset,  it  is  hard  to  conceive  of  any  sin  against  taste  and  feeling,  against  art 
and  morals,  more  flagrant  than  such  a  publication.  The  practice,  to  which 
French  writers  are  so  much  addicted,  of  making  "copy"  of  the  private  lives, 
characters,  and  relationships  of  themselves  and  their  friends,  seems  to  me  in  all 
cases  utterly  detestable.  Lamartine's  sins  of  this  kind  were  grievous  and  glar- 
ing ;  but  were  they  red  as  scarlet,  they  would  seem  whiter  than  snow  when  com- 
pared with  the  lurid  monstrosity  of  George  Sand's  assault  on  the  memory  of  the 
dead  poet  who  was  once  her  favorite.  The  whole  affair  indeed  is  so  unlike  any- 
thing which  could  occur  in  America  or  in  England,  that  we  can  hardly  find  any 
canons  by  which  to  try  it,  or  any  standard  of  punishment  by  which  to  regulate  its 
censure.  I  allude  to  it  now  because  it  is  the  only  substantial  evidence  I  know 
of  which  does  fairly  seem  to  justify  the  worst  of  the  accusations  brought  against 
George  Sand;  and  I  do  not  think  it  right,  when  writing  for  grown  men  and 
women,  who  are  supposed  to  have  sense  and  judgment,  to  affect  not  to  know 
that  such  accusations  are  made,  or  to  pretend  to  think  that  it  would  be  proper 
not  to  allude  to  them.  They  have  been  put  forward,  replied  to,  urged  again, 
made  the  theme  of  all  manner  of  controversy  in  scores  of  French  and  in  some 
English  publications.  Pray  let  it  be  distinctly  understood  that  I  am  not  entering 
into  any  criticism  of  the  morality  of  any  part  of  George  Sand's  private  life.  With 
that  we  have  nothing  here  to  do.  I  am  now  dealing  with  the  question,  fairly 
belonging  to  public  controversy,  whether  the  great  artist  did  not  deliberately 
deal  with  human  hearts  as  the  painter  of  old  is  said  to  have  done  with  a  pur- 
chased slave — inflicting  torture  in  order  the  better  to  learn  how  to  depict  the  strug- 
gles and  contortions  of  mortal  agony.  In  answer  to  such  a  question  I  can  only 
point  to  "  Lucrezia  Floriani  "  and  to  "Elle  et  Lui,"  and  say  that  unless  the  uni- 
versal opinion  of  qualified  critics  be  wrong  these  books,  and  others  too,  owe 
their  piquancy  and  their  dramatic  force  to  the  anatomization  of  dead  passions 
and  discarded  lovers.  We  have  all  laughed  over  the  pedantic  surgeon  in  Mo- 
liere's  "  Malade  Imaginaire,"  who  invites  his  fiancee  as  a  delightful  treat  to  see 
him  dissect  the  body  of  a  woman.  I  am  afraid  that  George  Sand  did  sometimes 
invite  an  admiring  public  to  an  exhibition  yet  more  ghastly  and  revolting — the 
dissection  of  the  heart  of  a  dead  lover. 

But  in  truth  we  shall  never  judge  George  Sand  and  her  writings  at  all  if  we 
insist  on  criticising  them  from  any  point  of  view  set  up  by  the  proprieties  or 
even  the  moralities  of  Old  England  or  New  England.  When  the  passionate 
young  woman,  in  whose  veins  ran  the  wild  blood  of  Marshal  Saxe,  found  herself 
surrendered  by  legality  and  prescription  to  a  marriage  bond  against  which  her 
soul  revolted,  society  seemed  for  her  to  have  resolved  itself  into  its  original  ele- 
ments. Its  conventionalities  and  traditions  contained  nothing  which  she  held 
herself  bound  to  respect.  The  world  was  not  her  friend,  nor  the  world's  law. 
By  one  great  decisive  step  she  sundered  herself  forever  from  the  bonds  of  what 


152  GEORGE  SAND. 

we  call  society.  She  had  shaken  the  dust  of  convention  from  her  feet ;  the 
world  was  all  before  her  where  to  choose.  No  creature  on  earth  is  so  absolutely 
free  as  the  Frenchwoman  who  has  broken  with  society.  There,  then,  stood  this 
daring  young  woman,  on  the  threshold  of  a  new,  fresh,  and  illimitable  world  ;  a 
young  woman  gifted  with  genius  such  as  our  later  years  have  rarely  seen,  and 
blessed  or  cursed  with  a^  nature  so  strangely  uniting  the  most  characteristic  qual- 
ities of  man  and  woman  as  to  be  in  itself  quite  unparalleled  and  unique.  Just 
think  of  it — try  to  think  of  it !  Society  and  the  world  had  no  longer  any  laws 
which  she  recognized.  Nothing  was  sacred  ;  nothing  was  settled.  She  had 
to  evolve  from  her  own  heart  and  brain  her  own  law  of  life.  What  wonder  if 
she  made  some  sad  mistakes  ?  Nay,  is  it  not  rather  a  theme  for  wonder  and  admi- 
ration that  she  did  somehow  come  right  at  last  ?  I  know  of  no  one  who  seerns 
to  me  to  have  been  open  at  once  to  the  temptations  of  woman's  nature  and  man's 
nature  except  this  George  Sand.  Her  soul,  her  brain,  her  style  may  be  described, 
from  one  point  of  view,  as  exuberantly  and  splendidly  feminine  ;  yet  no  other 
woman  has  ever  shown  the  same  power  of  understanding  and  entering  into  the 
nature  of  a  man.  If  Balzac  is  the  only  man  who  has  ever  thoroughly  mastered 
the  mysteries  of  a  woman's  heart,  George  Sand  is  the  only  woman,  so  far  as  I 
know,  who  has  ever  shown  that  she  could  feel  as  a  man  can  feel.  I  have  read 
stray  passages  in  her  novels  which  I  would  confidently  submit  to  the  criticism 
of  any  intelligent  men  unacquainted  with  the  text,  convinced  that  they  would 
declare  that  only  a  man  could  have  thus  analyzed  the  emotions  of  manhood.  I 
have  in  my  mind  just  now  especially  a  passage  in  the  novel  "Piccinino"  which, 
were  the  authorship  unknown,  would,  I  am  satisfied,  secure  the  decision  of  a 
jury  of  literary  experts  that  the  author  must  be  a  man.  Now  this  gift  of  entire 
appreciation  of  the  feelings  of  a  different  sex  or  race  is,  I  take  it,  one  of  the 
rarest  and  highest  dramatic  qualities.  Especially  is  it  difficult  for  a  woman,  as 
our  social  life  goes,  to  enter  into  the  feelings  of  a  man.  While  men  and  women 
alike  admit  the  accuracy  of  certain  pictures  of  women  drawn  by  such  artists  as 
Cervantes,  Moliere,  Balzac,  and  Thackeray,  there  are  few  women — indeed,  per- 
haps there  are  no  women  but  one — by  whom  a  man  has  been  so  painted  as  to 
challenge  and  compel  the  recognition  and  acknowledgment  of  men.  In  THE 
GALAXY  some  months  ago  I  wrote  of  a  great  Englishwoman,  the  authoress  of 
"  Romola,"  and  I  expressed  my  conviction  that  on  the  whole  she  is  entitled  to 
higher  rank  as  a  novelist  than  even  the  authoress  of  "  Consuelo."  Many,  very 
many  men  and  women,  for  whose  judgment  I  have  the  highest  respect,  differed 
from  me  in  this  opinion.  I  still  hold  it,  nevertheless  ;  but  I  freely  admit  that 
George  Eliot  has  nothing  like  the  dramatic  insight  which  enables  George  Sand 
to  enter  into  the  feelings  and  the  experiences  of  a  man.  I  go  so  far  as  to  say 
that,  having  some  knowledge  of  the  literature  of  fiction  in  most  countries,  I  am 
not  aware  of  the  existence  of  any  woman  but  this  one  who  could  draw  a  real, 
living,  struggling,  passion-tortured  man.  All  other  novelists  of  George  Sand's 
sex — even  including  Charlotte  Bronte — draw  only  what  I  may  call  "  women's 
men."  If  ever  the  two  natures  could  be  united  in  one  form,  if  ever  a  single 
human  being  could  have  the  soul  of  man  and  the  soul  of  woman  at  once,  George 
Sand  might  be  described  as  that  physical  and  psychological  phenomenon.  Now 
the  point  to  which  I  wish  to  direct  attention  is  the  peculiarity  of  the  temptation 
to  which  a  nature  such  as  this  was  necessarily  exposed  at  every  turn  when,  free 
of  all  reslraint  and  a  rebel  against  all  conventionality,  it  confronted  the  world 
and  the  world's  law,  and  stood  up,  itself  alone,  against  the  domination  of  custom 
and  the  majesty  of  tradition.  I  claim,  then,  that  when  we  have  taken  all  these 


GEORGE  SAND.  153 

considerations  into  account,  we  are  bound  to  admit  that  Aurora  Dudevant  de- 
serves the  generous  recognition  of  the  world  for  the  use  which  she  made  of  her 
splendid  gifts.  Her  influence  on  French  literature  has  been  on  the  whole  a  puri- 
fying and  strengthening  power.  The  cynicism,  the  recklessness,  the  wanton, 
licentious  disregard  of  any  manner  of  principle,  the  debasing  parade  of  disbelief 
in  any  higher  purpose  or  nobler  restraint,  which  are  the  shame  and  curse  of  mod- 
ern French  fiction,  find  no  sanction  in  the  pages  of  George  Sand.  I  remember 
no  passage  in  her  works  which  gives  the  slightest  encouragement  to  the  "  noth- 
ing new,  and  nothing  true,  and  it  don't  signify"  code  of  ethics  which  has  been 
so  much  in  fashion  of  late  years.  I  find  nothing  in  George  Sand  which  does  not 
do  homage  to  the  existence  of  a  principle  and  a  law  in  everything.  This  daring 
woman,  who  broke  with  society  so  early  and  so  conspicuously,  has  always  insisted, 
through  every  illustration,  character,  and  catastrophe  in  her  books,  that  the  one 
only  reality,  the  one  only  thing  that  can  endure,  is  the  rule  of  right  and  of  virtue. 
Nor  has  she  ever,  that  I  can  recollect,  fallen  into  the  enfeebling  and  sentimental 
theory  so  commonly  expressed  in  the  works  of  Victor  Hugo,  that  the  vague 
abstraction  society  is  always  to  bear  the  blame  of  the  faults  committed  by  the 
individual  man  or  woman.  Of  all  persons  in  the  world  Aurora  Dudevant  might 
be  supposed  most  likely  to  adopt  this  easy  and  complacent  theory  as  her  guiding 
principle.  She  had  every  excuse,  every  reason  for  endeavoring  to  preach  up  the 
doctrine  that  our  errors  are  society's  and  our  virtues  our  own.  But  I  am  not 
aware  that  she  ever  taught  any  lesson  save  the  lesson  that  men  and  women  must 
endeavor  to  be  heroes  and  heroines  for  themselves,  heroes  and  heroines  though 
all  the  world  else  were  craven  and  weak  and  selfish  and  unprincipled.  Evea 
that  wretched  and  lamentable  "Elle  et  Lui"  affair,  utterly  inexcusable  as  it  is 
when  we  read  between  the  lines  its  secret  history,  has  at  least  the  merit  of  being 
an  earnest  and  powerful  protest  against  the  egotistical  and  debasing  indulgence 
of  moral  weaknesses  and  eccentricities  which  mean  and  vulgar  minds  are  apt  to 
regard  as  the  privilege  of  genius.  "  Stand  upon  your  own  ground  ;  be  your  own 
ruler ;  look  to  yourself,  not  to  your  stars,  for  your  failure  or  success  ;  always 
make  your  standard  a  lofty  ideal,  and  try  persistently  to  reach  it,  though  all  the 
temptations  of  earth  and  all  the  power  of  darkness  strive  against  you" — this  and 
nothing  else,  if  I  have  read  her  books  rightly,  is  the  moral  taught  by  George 
Sand.  She  may  be  wrong  in  her  principle  sometimes,  but  at  least  she  always 
has  a  principle.  She  has  a  profound  and  generous  faith  in  the  possibilities  of 
human  nature  ;  in  the  capacity  of  man's  heart  for  purity,  self-sacrifice,  and  self- 
redemption.  Indeed,  so  far  is  she  from  holding  counsel  with  wilful  weakness  or 
sin,  that  I  think  she  sometimes  falls  into  the  noble  error  of  painting  her  heroes 
as  too  glorious  in  their  triumph  over  temptation,  in  their  subjugation  of  every 
passion  and  interest  to  the  dictates  of  duty  and  of  honor.  Take,  for  instance, 
that  extraordinary  book  which  has  just  been  given  to  the  American  public  in 
Miss  Virginia  Vaughan's  excellent  translation,  "  Mauprat."  If  I  understand 
that  magnificent  romance  at  all,  its  purport  is  to  prove  that  no  human  nature  is  ever 
plunged  into  temptation  beyond  its  own  strength  to  resist,  provided  that  it  really 
wills  resistance  ;  that  no  character  is  irretrievable,  no  error  inexpiable,  where 
there  is  sincere  resolve  to  expiate  and  longing  desire  to  retrieve.  Take  again 
that  exquisite  little  story,  "La  Derniere  Aldini";  I  do  not  know  where  one 
could  find  a  finer  illustration  of  the  entire  sacrifice  of  man's  natural  impulse, 
passion,  interest,  to  what  might  almost  be  called  an  abstract  idea  of  honor  and 
principle.  I  have  never  read  this  little  story  without  wondering  how  many  men 
oue  ever  has  known  who,  placed  in  the  same  situation  as  that  of  Nello,  the  hero, 


154  GEORGE  SAND. 

would  have  done  the  same  thing ;  and  yet  so  simply  and  naturally  are  the  char- 
acters wrought  out  and  the  incidents  described,  that  the  idea  of  pompous,  dra- 
matic self-sacrifice  never  enters  the  mind  of  the  reader,  and  it  seems  to  him 
that  Nello  could  not  do  otherwise  than  as  he  is  doing.  I  speak  of  these  two 
stories  particularly,  because  in  both  of  them  there  is  a  good  deal  of  the  worlr1 
and  the  flesh  ;  that  is,  both  are  stories  of  strong  human  passion  and  temptation. 
Many  of  George  Sand's  novels,  the  shorter  ones  especially,  are  as  absolutely 
pure  in  moral  tone,  as  entirely  free  from  even  a  taint  or  suggestion  of  impurity, 
as  they  are  perfect  in  style.  Now,  if  we  cannot  help  knowing  that  much  of 
this  great  woman's  life  was  far  from  being  irreproachable,  are  we  not  bound  to 
give  her  all  the  fuller  credit  because  her  genius  at  least  kept  so  far  the  white- 
ness of  its  soul  ?  Revolutions  are  not  to  be  made  with  rose  water  ;  you  cannot 
have  omelettes  without  breaking  of  eggs.  I  am  afraid  that  great  social  revolu- 
tionists are  not  often  creatures  of  the  most  pure  and  perfect  nature.  It  is  not  to 
patient  Griselda  you  must  look  for  any  protest  against  even  the  uttermost  tyran- 
ny of  social  conventions.  One  thing  I  think  may  at  least  be  admitted  as  part  of 
George  Sand's  vindication — that  the  marriage  system  in  France  is  the  most  de- 
based and  debasing  institution  existing  in  civilized  society,  now  that  the  buying 
and  selling  of  slaves  has  ceased  to  be  a  tolerated  system.  I  hold  that  the  most 
ardent  advocates  of  the  irrevocable  endurance  of  the  marriage  bond  are  bound 
by  their  very  principles  to  admit  that  in  protesting  against  the  so-called  marriage 
svstem  of  France  George  Sand  stood  on  the  side  of  purity  and  right.  Assuredly 
she  often  went  into  extravagances  in  the  other  direction.  It  seems  to  be  the 
fate  of  all  French  reformers  to  rush  suddenly  to  extremes  ;  and  we  must  remem- 
ber that  George  Sand  was  not  a  Bristol  Quakeress  or  a  Boston  transcenclentalist, 
but  a  passionate  Frenchwoman,  the  descendant  of  one  of  the  maddest  votaries 
of  love  and  war  who  ever  stormed  across  the  stage  of  European  history. 

Regarding  George  Sand  then  as  an  influence  in  literature  and  on  society,  I 
claim  for  her  at  least  four  great  and  special  merits.  First,  she  insisted  on  calling 
public  attention  to  the  true  principle  of  marriage ;  that  is  to  say,  she  put  the 
question  as  it  had  not  been  put  before.  Of  course,  the  fundamental  principle 
she  would  have  enforced  is  always  being  urged  more  or  less  feebly,  more  or  less 
sincerely;  but  she  made  it  her  own  question,  and  illuminated  it  by  the  fervid, 
fierce  rays  of  her  genius  and  her  passion.  Secondly,  her  works  are  an  exposi- 
tion of  the  tremendous  reality  of  the  feelings  which  people  who  call  themselves 
practical  are  apt  to  regard  with  indifference  or  contempt  as  mere  sentiments.  In 
the  long  run  the  passions  decide  the  life-question  one  way  or  the  other.  They 
are  the  tide  which,  as  you  know  or  do  not  know  how  to  use  it,  will  either  turn  your 
mill  and  float  your  boat,  or  drown  your  fields  and  sweep  away  your  dwellings. 
Life  and  society  receive  no  impulse  and  no  direction  from  the  influences  out  of 
which  the  novels  of  Dickens  or  even  of  Thackeray  are  made  up.  These  are  but 
pleasant  or  tender  toying  with  the  playthings  and  puppets  of  existence.  George 
Sand  constrains,  us  to  look  at  the  realities  through  the  medium  of  her  fiction. 
Thirdly,  she  insists  that  man  can  and  shall  make  his  own  career ;  not  whine  to 
the  stars  and  rail  out  against  the  powers  above,  when  he  has  weakly  or  wantonly 
marred  his  own  destiny.  Fourthly — and  this  ought  not  to  be  considered  her 
least  service  to  the  literature  of  her  country — she  has  tried  to  teach  people  to 
look  at  nature  with  their  own  eyes,  and  to  invite  the  true  love  of  her  to  flow  into 
their  hearts.  The  great  service  which  Ruskin,  with  all  his  eccentricities  and 
extravagances,  has  rendered  to  English-speaking  peoples  by  teaching  them  to 
use  their  own  eyes  when  they  look  at  clouds,  and  waters,  and  grasses,  and  hills, 
George  Sand  has  rendered  to  France. 


GEORGE  SAND.  155 

I  hold  that  these  are  virtues  and  services  which  ought  to  outweigh  even  very 
grave  personal  and  artistic  errors.  We  often  hear  that  this  or  that  great  poet 
or  romancist  has  painted  men  as  they  are  ;  this  other  as  they  ought  to  be.  I 
think  George  Sand  paints  men  as  they  are,  and  also  not  merely  as  they  ought 
to  be,  but  as  they  can  be.  The  sum  of  the  lesson  taught  by  her  books  is  one  of 
confidence  in  man's  possibilities,  and  hope  in  his  steady  progress.  At  the  same 
time  she  is  entirely  practical  in  her  faith  and  her  aspirations.  She  never  expects 
that  the  trees  are  to  grow  up  into  the  heavens,  that  men  and  women  are  to  be 
other  than  men  and  women.  She  does  not  want  them  to  be  other  ;  she  finds 
the  springs  and  sources  of  their  social  regeneration  in  the  fact  that  they  are  just 
what  they  are,  to  begin  with.  I  am  afraid  some  of  the  ladies  who  seem  to  base 
their  scheme  of  woman's  emancipation  and  equality  on  the  assumption  that,  by 
some  development  of  time  or  process  of  schooling,  a  condition  of  things  is  to  be 
brought  about  where  difference  of  sex  is  no  longer  to  be  a  disturbing  power,  will 
find  small  comfort  or  encouragement  in  the  writings  of  George  Sand.  She  deals 
in  realities  altogether;  the  realities  of  life,  even  when  they  are  such  as  to  shal- 
low minds  may  seem  mere  sentiments  and  ecstasies  ;  the  realities  of  society,  of 
suffering,  of  passion,  of  inanimate  nature.  There  is  in  her  nothing  unmeaning, 
nothing  untrue ;  there  is  in  her  much  error,  doubtless,  but  no  sham. 

I  believe  George  Sand  is  growing  into  a  quiet  and  beautiful  old  age.  After  a 
life  of  storm  and  stress,  a  life  which,  metaphorically  at  least,  was  "  worn  by  war 
and  passion,"  her  closing  years  seem  likely  to  be  gilded  with  the  calm  glory  of 
an  autumnal  sunset.  One  is  glad  to  think  of  her  thus  happy  and  peaceful,  ac- 
cepting so  tranquilly  the  reality  of  old  age,  still  laboring  with  her  unwearied  pen, 
still  delighting  in  books,  and  landscapes,  and  friends,  and  work.  The  world  can 
well  afford  to  forget  as  soon  as  possible  her  literary  and  other  errors.  Of  the  vast 
mass  of  romances,  stories,  plays,  sketches,  criticisms,  pamphlets,  political  articles, 
even,  it  is  said,  ministerial  manifestoes  of  republican  days,  which  she  poured 
out,  only  a  few  comparatively  will  perhaps  be  always  treasured  by  posterity ; 
but  these  will  be  enough  to  secure  her  a  classic  place.  And  she  will  not  be  re- 
membered by  her  writings  alone.  Hers  is  probably  the  most  powerful  individ- 
uality displayed  by  any  modern  Frenchwoman.  The  influence  of  Madame  Ro- 
land was  but  a  glittering  unreality,  that  of  Madame  de  Stael  only  a  boudoir  and 
coterie  success,  when  compared  with  the  power  exercised  over  literature,  human 
feeling,  and  social  law,  by  the  energy,  the  courage,  the  genius,  even  the  very 
errors  and  extravagances  of  George  Sand. 


EDWARD  BULWER,  LORD  LYTTON. 


TEN  years  ago  an  important  political  question  was  agitating  the  Englisti 
House  of  Commons  and  the  English  public.  It  was  the  old  question  of 
Parliamentary  Reform  in  a  new  shape.  Thirty  years  before  Lord  John  Russell 
had  pleaded  the  right  of  the  middle  classes  to  have  a  voice  in  the  election  of 
their  Parliamentary  representatives  ;  this  time  he  was  asserting  a  similar  right 
for  the  working  population.  Then  he  had  to  contend  against  the  opposition  of 
the  aristocracy  only ;  this  time  he  had  to  fight  against  the  combined  antagonism 
of  the  aristocracy  and  the  middle  classes,  the  latter  having  made  common  cause 
with  their  old  enemies  to  preserve  a  monopoly  of  their  new  privileges.  The  de- 
bate in  the  House  of  Commons  on  the  proposed  Reform  Bill  of  1860  was  long 
and  bitter.  When  it  was  reaching  its  height,  a  speaker  arose  on  the  Tory  side 
of  the  House  whose  appearance  on  the  scene  of  the  debate  lent  a  new  and 
piquant  interest  to  the  night's  discussion.  He  sat  on  the  front  bench  of  the 
Opposition,  quite  near  to  Disraeli  himself.  The  moment  he  rose,  every  head 
craned  forward  to  see  him  ;  the  moment  he  began  to  speak,  every  ear  was  strained 
with  keen  curiosity  to  hear  him.  The  ears  were  for  a  while  sorely  tried  and 
perplexed.  What  was  he  saying — nay,  what  language  was  he  speaking  ?  What 
extraordinary,  indescribable  sounds  were  those  which  were  heard  issuing  from 
his  lips  ?  Were  they  articulate  sounds  at  all?  For  some  minutes  certainly 
those  who  like  myself  had  never  heard  the  speaker  before  were  utterly  bewil- 
dered. We  could  only  hear  what  seemed  to  us  an  incoherent,  inarticulate  gut- 
tural jabber,  like  the  efforts  at  speech  of  somebody  with  a  mutilated  tongue  or 
excided  palate.  Anything  like  it  I  never  heard  before  or  since  ;  for  no  subse- 
quent listening  to  the  same  speaker  ever  produced  nearly  the  same  impression  : 
either  he  had  greatly  improved  in  elocution,  or  his  listener  had  grown  used  to 
him.  But  the  night  of  this  famous  speech,  nothing  could  have  exceeded  the  ex- 
traordinary nature  of  the  sensations  produced  on  those  who  heard  the  orator  for 
the  first  time.  After  a  while  we  began  to  detect  articulate  sounds;  then  we" 
guessed  at  and  recognized  words  ;  then  whole  sentences  began  to  shape  them- 
selves out  of  the  guttural  fag ;  and  at  last  we  grew  to  understand  that,  with  an 
elocution  the  most  defective  and  abominable  ever  possessed  by  mortal  orator,  this 
Tory  speaker  was  really  delivering  a  speech  of  astonishing  brilliancy,  ingenuity, 
and  power.  The  sentences  had  a  magnificent,  almost  majestic  rotundity,  en- 
ergy, and  power  ;  they  reminded  one  of  something  cut  out  of  solid  and  glittering 
marble,  at  once  so  dazzling  and  so  impressive.  The  speech  was  from  first  to 
last  an  aristocratic  argument  against  the  fitness  of  the  working  man  to  be  any- 
thing but  a  political  serf.  In  the  true  fashion  of  the  aristocrat,  the  speaker  was 
for  patronizing  the  working  man  in  every  possible  way;  behaving  to  him  as  a 
kind  and  friendly  master  ;  seeing  that  he  had  a  decent  home  to  live  in  and  coals 
and  blankets  in  winter ;  but  all  the  time  insisting  that  the  ruin  of  England  must 
follow  any  successful  attempt  to  place  political  power  in  the  hands  of  "poverty 
and  passion."  The  speech  overflowed  with  illustration,  ingenious  analogy, 
felicitous  quotation,  brilliant  epigram,  and  political  paradoxes  that  were  made 
to  sound  wondrously  like  maxims  of  wisdom.  Despite  all  its  hideous  defects 
of  delivery,  this  speech  was.  beyond  the  most  distant  comparison,  the  finest  de- 
livered on  the  Tory  side  during  the  whole  of  that  long  and  memorable  debate.  For 


EDWARD  BULWER,  LORD  LYTTOX.  157 

a  time  one  was  almost  cheated  into  the  belief  that  that  elaborate  and  splendid  dic- 
t;on.  now  so  stately  and  now  so  sparkling,  was  genuine  eloquence.  Yet  to  the  last 
the  listener  was  frequently  baffled  by  some  uncouth,  semi-articulate,  hardly  intel- 
ligible sound.  "  What  on  earth  does  he  mean,"  asked  a  puzzled  and  indeed 
agonized  reporter  of  some  laboring  brother,  "  by  talking  so  often  about  the  polit- 
ical authority  of  Joe  Miller?"  Careful  inquiry  elicited  the  fact  that  the  name 
of  the  political  authority  to  which  the  orator  had  been  alluding  was  John  Mill. 
Fortunately  for  his  readers  and  his  fame,  the  speaker  had  taken  good  care  to 
write  out  his  oration  and  send  the  manuscript  to  the  newspapers. 

Now  this  inarticulate  orator,  this  Demosthenes  without  the  pebble-training, 
was,  as  my  readers  have  already  guessed,  Edward  Bulwer-Lytton,  then  a  baronet 
and  a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons,  now  a  peer.  Undoubtedly  he  suc- 
ceeded, by  this  and  one  or  two  other  speeches,  in  securing  for  himself  a  place 
among  the  few  great  Parliamentary  debaters  of  the  day.  Despite  of  physical 
defects  which  would  have  discouraged  almost  any  other  man  from  entering  into 
public  life  at  all,  he  had  succeeded  in  winning  a  reputation  as  a  great  speaker  in 
a  debate  where  Palmerston,  Gladstone,  Bright,  and  Disraeli  were  champions. 
So  deaf  that  he  could  not  hear  the  arguments  of  his  opponents,  so  defective  in 
utterance  as  to  become  often  almost  unintelligible,  he  actually  made  the  House 
of  Commons  doubt  for  a  while  whether  a  new  great  orator  had  not  come 
among  them.  It  was  not  great  oratory  after  all ;  it  was  not  true  oratory  of 
any  kind  ;  but  it  was  a  splendid  imitation  of  the  real  thing — the  finest  electro- 
plate anywhere  to  be  found.  "  If  it  is  not  Bran,  it  is  Bran's  brother,"  says  a 
Scottish  proverb.  If  this  speech  of  Bulwer-Lytton's  was  not  true  oratory,  it 
was  oratory's  illegitimate  brother. 

Nearly  a  whole  generation  before  the  winning  of  that  late  success,  Bulwer- 
Lytton  had  tried  the  House  of  Commons,  and  miserably,  ludicrously  failed.  The 
young  Tory  members  who  vociferously  cheered  his  great  anti-reform  speech  of 
1860,  were  in  their  cradles  when  Bulwer-Lytton  first  addressed  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  having  signally  failed  withdrew,  as  people  supposed,  altogether 
from  Parliamentary  life.  His  failure  was  even  more  complete  than  that  of 
his  friend  Disraeli,  and  he  took  the  failure  more  to  heart.  Rumor  affirms  that 
the  first  serious  quarrel  between  Bulwer  and  his  wife  arose  out  of  her  vexation 
and  disappointment  at  his  break-down,  and  the  bitter,  provoking  taunts  with 
which  she  gave  vent  to  her  anger.  I  know  no  other  instance  of  a  rhetorical  tri- 
umph so  long  delayed,  and  at  length  so  completely  effected.  Nor  can  one 
learn  that  it  was  by  any  intervening  practice  or  training  that  Bulwer  in  his  de- 
clining years  atoned  for  the  failure  of  his  youth.  He  was  never  that  I  know  of  a 
public  speaker ;  he  won  his  Parliametary  success  in  defiance  of  Charles  James 
Fox's  famous  axiom,  that  a  speaker  can  only  improve  himself  at  the  expense  of 
his  audiences.  Between  his  failure  and  his  triumph  Bulwer-Lytton  may  be  said 
to  have  had  no  political  audience. 

A  statesman  Bulwer-Lytton  never  became,  although  he  held  high  office  in  a 
Tory  Cabinet.  He  did  little  or  nothing  to  distinguish  himself,  unless  there  be 
distinction  in  writing  some  high-flown,  eloquent  despatches,  such  as  Ernest 
Maltravers  might  have  penned,  to  the  discontented  islanders  of  Ionia ;  and  it 
was  he,  if  I  remember  rightly,  who  thought  of  sending  out  "  Gladstone  the 
Philhellene"  on  that  mission  of  futile  conciliation  which  only  misled  the  lonians 
and  amused  England.  It  always  seemed  to  me  that  in  his  political  career  Bul- 
wer acted  just  as  one  of  the  heroes  of  his  own  romances  might  have  done.  Hav- 
ing suffered  defeat  and  humiliation,  he  vowed  a  vow  to  wrest  from  Fate  a  vie- 


158  EDWARD  JBULWER,  LORD  LYTTON. 

tory  upon  the  very  spot  which  had  seen  his  discomfiture  ;  and  he  kept  his  word, 
won  his  victory,  and  then  calmly  quitted  the  field  forever.  A  more  prosaic  expla- 
nation might  perhaps  be  found  in  the  fact  that  weak  physical  health  rendered 
it  impossible  for  Bulwer  to  encounter  the  severe  continuous  labor  which  Eng- 
lish political  life  exacts.  But  I  prefer  for  myself  the  more  romantic  and  less 
commonplace  explanation,  and  I  hope  my  readers  will  do  likewise.  I  prefer  to 
tnink  of  the  great  romancist  retrieving  after  thirty  years  of  silence  his  Parliament- 
ary defeat,  and  then,  having  reconciled  himself  with  Destiny,  retiring  from  the 
scsne  contented,  to  struggle  in  that  arena  no  more..  In  all  seriousness,  there 
must  be  some  quality  of  greatness  in  the  man  who,  after  bearing  such  a  defeat 
for  so  many  years,  can  struggle  with  Fate  again,  and  accomplish  so  conspicuous 
a  success. 

Now  this  is  in  fact  one  grand  explanation  of  Bulwer-Lytton's  rank  in  Eng- 
lish literature.  He  has  the  self-reliance,  the  patience,  the  courage  so  rare  among 
literary  men,  by  which  one  is  enabled  to  extract  their  full  and  utter  value  from 
whatsoever  intellectual  endowments  he  may  possess.  Bulwer-Lytton  alone 
among  all  famous  English  authors  of  our  days  has  apparently  done  all  that  he 
could  possibly  do — obtained  from  his  faculties  their  entire  tribute.  Readers  of 
the  letters  of  poor  Charlotte  Bronte  may  remember  the  impatience  with  which 
she  occasionally  complained  that  her  idol  Thackeray  would  not  put  forth  his 
whole  strength.  No  such  fault  could  possibly  be  found  with  Bulwer-Lytton. 
Sooner  or  later  he  always  put  forth  his  whole  strength.  He  had  many  failures, 
but,  as  in  the  case  of  his  political  discomfiture,  he  had  always  the  art  of  learning 
from  failure  the  way  how  to  succeed,  and  accordingly  succeeding.  When  he 
wrote  his  wretched  "  Sea  Captain,"  the  critics  all  told  him  he  could  not  produce 
a  successful  drama.  Bulwer  thought  he  could.  He  thought  the  very  failure  of 
that  attempt  would  show  him  how  to  succeed  another  time.  He  was  determined 
not  to  give  in  until  he  had  satisfied  himself  as  to  his  fitness,  one  way  or  the 
other,  and  so  he  persevered.  Now  observe  the  character  of  the  man,  and  see 
how  much  superior  he  himself  is  to  his  works,  and  how  much  of  their  success 
the  works  owe  to  the  man's  peculiar  temper.  We  all  know  what  authors  usually 
are,  and  how  they  receive  criticism.  In  ordinary  cases,  when  the  critics  declare 
some  piece  of  work  a  failure,  the  author  either  is  crushed  for  the  time  by  the 
fiat,  or  he  insists  that  the  critics  are  idiots,  hired  assassins,  personal  enemies, 
and  so  forth  ;  he  defiantly  adheres  to  his  own  notions  and  his  own  method — and 
he  probably  fails.  Bulwer-Lytton  looked  at  the  matter  in  quite  a  different  light. 
He  said,  apparently,  to  himself:  "  The  critics  only  know  what  I  have  done  ;  I 
know  what  I  can  do.  From  their  point  of  view  they  are  quite  right — this  thing 
is  a  failure.  But  I  know  that  it  is  a  failure  only  because  I  went  to  work  the 
wrong  way.  I  can  do  something  infinitely  better.  Their  experience  and  their 
comments  have  given  me  some  valuable  hints  ;  I  will  forthwith  go  to  work  on  a 
better  principle."  So  Bulwer-Lytton  wrote  "Richelieu,"  "Money,"  and  the 
"  Lady  of  Lyons  " — the  last  probably  the  most  successful  acting  drama  produced 
in  England  since  the  days  of  Shakespeare,  and  the  first  hardly  below  it  in  stage 
success.  Of  course  I  am  not  claiming  for  either  of  these  plays  a  high  and  gen- 
uine dramatic  value.  They  probably  bear  the  same  resemblance  to  the  true 
drama  that  their  author's  Parliamentary  speech-making  does  to  true  eloquence. 
But  of  their  popularity  and  their  transcendent  technical  success  there  cannot  be 
the  slightest  doubt.  Bulwer-Lytton  proved  to  his  critics  that  he  could  do  bet- 
ter than  any  other  living  man  the  very  thing  they  said  he  could  never  do — write 
a  play  that  should  conquer  the  public  and  hold  the  stage.  So  to  those  who 


EDWARD  BULWER,  LORD  LYTTON.  159 

affirmed  that,  whatever  else  he  might  do,  he  never  could  be  a  Parliamentary 
speaker,  he  replied  by  standing  up  when  approaching  the  very  brink  of  old 
age,  and  delivering  speeches  which  won  the  willing  and  generous  applause  of 
Disraeli,  and  extorted  the  reluctant  but  manly  and  frank  recognition  of  such  an 
opponent  as  John  Bright. 

Bulwer-Lytton  once  insisted,  in  an  address  delivered  to  some  English  liter- 
ary institution,  that  the  word  "  versatile "  is  generally  used  wrongly  when  we 
speak  of  men  who  do  a  great  many  things  well ;  that  it  is  a  comprehensive,  not 
merely  a  versatile  mind,  each  of  these  men  has  ;  not  a  knack  of  adroitly  turning 
himself  to  many  heterogeneous  labors,  but  a  capacity  so  wide  that  it  unfolds 
quite  naturally  many  fields  of  labor.  In  this  sense  Bulwer-Lytton  has  undoubt- 
edly a  more  comprehensive  mind  than  any  of  his  English  contemporaries.  He 
has  written  the  most  successful  dramas  and  some  of  the  most  successful  novels 
of  his  day  ;  and  he  has  so  varied  the  method  of  his  novel-writing  that  he  may 
be  said  to  have  at  least  three  distinct  and  separate  principles  of  construction. 
Some  of  his  poetic  translations  seem  to  me  almost  absolutely  the  best  done  in 
England  of  late  years;  many  of  his  essays  approach  a  true  literary  value,  while 
all  or  nearly  all  of  them  are  attractive  reading  ;  his  satire,  "  The  New  Timon," 
is  the  only  thing  of  the  kind  which  is  likely  to  outlive  his  age  ;  and  his  political 
speeches  are  what  I  have  already  described.*  Now,  to  estimate  the  personal  value 
of  these  successes,  let  us  not  fail  to  remember  that  their  author  never  was  placed 
in  a  condition  to  make  literary  or  other  labor  a  necessity,  and  that  for  nearly  a 
whole  generation  he  has  been  in  the  enjoyment  of  actual  wealth  ;  that  in  Eng- 
land literature  adds  little  or  no  social  distinction  to  a  man  of  Bulwer-Lytton's 
rank;  and  that  during  a  considerable  portion  of  his  life  the  author  of  "The 
Caxtons  "  and  "  My  Novel  "  has  been  tortured  by  almost  incessant  ill-health. 
Almost  everything  that  could  tend  to  make  a  man  shun  continuous  and  patient 
labor  (opulence  and  ill-health  would  be  quite  enough  to  make  most  of  us  shun 
it)  combined  to  render  Buhver-Lytton  an  idle  or  at  least  an  indolent  man.  Yet 
almost  all  the  literary  success  he  attained  was  due  to  a  patient  toil  which  would 
have  wearied  out  a  penny-a-liner,  and  a  laborious  self-study  and  self-culture 
which  might  have  overtaxed  the  nerves  of  a  Konigsberg  professor.  "  Easy  writ- 
ing is  cursed  hard  reading,"  is  a  maxim  which  Bulwer-Lytton  fully  understood, 
and  of  which  he  showed  his  appreciation  in  his  personal  practice. 

Bulwer-Lytton  was  born  on  the  fringe  of  the  aristocratic  region.  He  can 
hardly  be  said  to  belong  to  the  genuine  aristocracy,  although  of  late,  thanks  to  his 
political  opinions  and  his  peerage,  he  has  come  to  be  ranked  among  aristocrats. 
He  is  the  brother  of  a  distinguished  diplomatist,  Sir  Henry  Bulwer,  and  the 
father  of  a  somewhat  promising  diplomatist,  not  quite  unknown  to  Washington 
people,  Robert  Lytton,  "  Owen  Meredith."  Bulwer-Lytton  had  advanced  tol- 
erably far  upon  his  career  when  he  inherited  through  his  mother  a  magnificent 
estate,  which  enabled  him  to  set  up  for  an  aristocrat.  His  baronetcy  had  been 
conferred  upon  him  by  the  Crown,  as  his  peerage  lately  was.  He  started  in 
political  life,  like  Mr.  Disraeli,  as  a  Liberal ;  indeed,  it  was,  if  I  am  not  greatly 
mistaken,  on  the  introduction  of  Bulwer-Lytton  that  Disraeli  obtained  the  early 
patronage  of  Daniel  O'Connell,  which  he  so  soon  forfeited  by  the  political 
tergiversation  that  drew  down  from  the  great  Agitator  the  famous  outburst  of 
fierce  and  savage  scorn  wherein,  alluding  to  Disraeli's  boasted  Jewish  origin,  he 
proclaimed  him  evidently  descended  in  a  right  line  from  the  blasphemous  thief 
who  died  impenitent  on  the  cross.  Disraeli's  apostasy  was  sudden  and  glaring, 
and  he  kept  the  field.  Buhver-Lytton  soon  faded  out  of  politics  altogether  for 


ICO  EDWARD  BULWER,  LORD  LYTTON. 

nearly  thirty  years,  and  when  he  reappeared  in  the  House  of  Commons  and  wore 
the  garb  of  a  Tory,  his  old  friend  and  political  patron  O'Connell  had  long  be- 
come a  mere  tradition.  Nearly  all  of  those  who  listened  with  curiosity  to  Bul- 
wer-Lytton's  speeches  in  1859  and  1860,  were  curious  only  to  hear  how  a  great 
romancist  and  dramatist  would  acquit  himself  in  a  part  which,  so  far  as  they  were 
concerned,  was  entirely  a  new  appearance.  They  had  no  personal  memory  of 
his  former  efforts  ;  no  recollection  of  the  time  when  the  young  author  of  the 
sparkling,  piquant,  and  successful  "Pelham"  endeavored  to  take  London  by 
storm  as  a  political  orator,  and  failed  in  the  enterprise. 

In  one  peculiarity,  at  least,  Bulwer-Lytton  the  novelist  surpassed  all  his  ri- 
vals and  contemporaries.  His  range  was  so  wide  as  to  take  in  all  circles  and 
classes  of  English  readers.  He  wrote  fashionable  novels,  historical  novels,  po- 
litical novels,  metaphysical  novels,  psychological  novels,  moral-purpose  novels, 
immoral-purpose  novels.  "  Wilhelm  Meister  "  was  not  too  heavy  nor  "  Tristram 
Shandy  "  too  light  for  him.  He  tried  to  rival  Scott  in  the  historical  romance  ;  he 
strove  hard  to  be  another  Goethe  in  his  "Ernest  Maltravers  "  ;  he  quite  sur- 
passed Ainsworth's  "Jack  Sheppard,"  and  the  general  run  of  what  we  in  Eng- 
land call  "  thieves'  literature,"  in  his  "  Paul  Clifford  "  ;  he  became  a  sort  of  pinch- 
beck Sterne  in  "The  Caxtons,"  and  was  severely  classical  in  "The  Last  Days 
of  Pompeii."  One  might  divide  his  novels  into  at  least  half  a  dozen  classes,  each 
class  quite  distinct  and  different  from  all  the  rest,  and  yet  the  one  author,  the 
one  Bulwer-Lytton,  showing  and  shining  through  them  all.  Bulwer  is  always 
there.  He  is  masquerading  now  in  the  garb  of  a  mediaeval  baron,  and  now  in 
that  of  an  old  Roman  dandy ;  anon  he  is  disguised  as  a  thief  from  St.  Giles's, 
and  again  as  a  full-blooded  aristocrat  from  the  region  of  St.  James's.  But  he  is 
the  same  man  always,  and  you  can  hardly  fail  to  recognize  him  even  in  his  clev- 
erest disguise.  It  may  be  questioned  whether  there  is  one  spark  of  true  and 
original  genius  in  Bulwer.  Certain  ideas  commonly  floating  about  in  this  or  that 
year  he  collects  and  brings  to  a  focus,  and  by  their  aid  he  burns  a  distinct  im- 
pression into  the  public  mind.  Just  as  he  expressed  the  thin  and  spurious  clas- 
sicism of  one  period  in  his  Pompeian  romance,  so  he  made  copy  out  of  the  pseudo- 
science  and  bastard  psychology  of  a  later  day  in  his  "Strange  Story."  Never 
was  there  in  literature  a  more  masterly  and  wonderful  mechanic.  Many-sided 
he  never  was,  although  probably  the  fame  of  many-sidedness  (if  one  may  use  so 
ungraceful  an  expression)  is  the  renown  which  he  specially  coveted  and  most 
strenuously  strove  to  win.  Only  genius  can  be  many-sided,  and  Bulwer- Lytton's 
marvellous  capability  never  can  be  confounded  with  genius.  The  nearest  ap- 
proach to  genius  in  all  his  works  may  be  found  in  their  occasional  outbursts  and 
flashes  of  audacious,  preposterous  absurdity.  The  power  which  could  palm  off 
such  outrageous  nonsense  as  in  some  instances  he  has  done  on  two  or  three 
generations  of  novel-readers,  which  could  compel  the  public  to  swallow  it  and 
delight  in  it,  despite  all  that  the  satire  of  a  Thackeray  or  a  Jerrold  could  do, 
must  surely,  one  would  almost  say,  have  had  something  in  it  savoring  of  a  sort 
of  genius.  For  there  are  in  some  even  of  the  very  best  and  purest  of  Bulvver's 
novels  whole  scenes  and  characters  which  it  seems  almost  utterly  impossible 
that  any  reader  whatever  could  follow  without  laughter.  I  protest  that  I  think 
the  author  of  "  Ernest  Maltravers  "  owed  much  of  his  success  to  the  daring  which 
assumed  that  anything  might  be  imposed  on  the  public,  and  to  the  absence  of 
that  sense  of  the  ludicrous  which  might  have  made  a  man  of  a  different  stamp 
laugh  at  his  own  nonsense.  I  assume  that  Bulwer  wrote  in  perfect  faith  and 
seriousness,  honestly  believing  them  to  be  fine,  the  most  ridiculous,  bombastic, 


EDWARD  BULWER,  LORD  LYTTON.  1G1 

fantastic  passages  in  all  his  novels.  I  take  it  for  granted  that  Mr.  Morris's  sad 
hero,  "  The  Man  who  never  Laughed  Again,"  must  have  been  frivolity  itself 
when  compared  with  Bulwer-Lytton  at  work  upon  a  novel.  The  sensitive  dis- 
trust of  one's  own  capacity,  the  high-minded  doubt  of  the  value  of  one's  own 
works,  which  is  probably  the  companion,  the  Mentor,  the  tormentor  often,  and 
not  un frequently  the  conqueror  and  destroyer  of  true  genius,  never  seems  to 
have  vexed  the  author  of  "Eugene  Aram"  and  "Godolphin."  Bulwer-Lytton 
won  a  great  name  partly  because  he  was  not  a  man  of  genius.  The  kind  of  thing 
he  tried  to  do  could  not  have  been  done  truly  and  successfully,  in  the  high  ar- 
tistic sense,  by  any  one  with  a  capacity  below  that  of  a  Shakespeare,  or  at  least 
a  Goethe.  A  man  of  genius,  but  inferior  genius,  would  have  made  a  wretched 
failure  of  it.  Between  the  two  stools  of  popularity  and  art,  of  time  and  eter- 
nity, he  n.ust  have  fallen  to  the  ground.  But  where  genius  might  fail  to  achieve 
a  splendid  success,  talent  and  audacity  might  turn  out  a  magnificent  sham.  This 
is  the  sort  of  success,  this  and  none  other,  which  I  believe  Bulwer-Lytton  to 
have  achieved.  He  is  the  finest  faiseur  in  the  literature  of  to-day.  His  wax- 
work gallery  surpasses  Madame  Tussaud's  ;  or  rather  his  sham  art  is  as  much 
superior  to  that  of  a  James  or  an  Ainsworth  as  Madame  Tussaud's  gallery  is  to 
Mrs.  Jarley's  show.  That  sort  of  sentiment  which  lies  somewhere  down  in  the 
heart  of  every  one,  however  commonplace,  oc  busy,  or  cynical — the  sentiment 
which  is  represented  by  the  applause  of  the  galleries  in  a  popular  theatre,  and 
which  cultivated  audiences  are  usually  ashamed  to  acknowledge — was  the  feeling 
which  Bulwer-Lytton  could  always  reach  and  draw  forth.  He  had  so  much  at 
least  of  the  true  artistic  instinct  as  to  recognize  that  the  strongest  element  of 
popularity  is  the  sentimental ;  and  he  knew  that  out  of  ten  persons  who  openly 
laugh  at  such  a  thing,  nine  are  secretly  touched  by  it.  Bulwer-Lytton  found 
much  of  his  stock  and  capital  in  the  human  emotions  which  sympathize  with 
youthful  ambition  and  youthful  love,  just  as  Dickens  makes  perpetual  play  with 
the  feelings  which  are  touched  by  the  death  of  children.  When  Claude  Mel- 
notte,  transfigured  into  the  splendid  Colonel  Morier,  rushes  forward  just  at  the 
critical  moment,  outbids  yon  sordid  huckster  for  his  priceless  jewel  Pauline,  flings 
down  the  purse  containing  double  the  needful  sum,  declares  that  he  has  bought 
every  coin  of  it  in  the  cause  of  nations  with  a  Frenchman's  blood,  and  sweeps 
away  his  ransomed  bride  amid  the  thunder  of  the  galleries,  of  course  we  all 
know  that  sort  of  thing  is  not  poetry,  or  high  art,  or  anything  but  splendiferous 
rubbish.  Yet  it  does  touch  most  of  us  somehow.  I  know  I  always  feel  divided 
between  laughter  and  enthusiastic  sympathy  even  still,  when  I  see  it  for  the  hun- 
dred and  fiftieth  time  or  so.  In  the  same  way,  when  Paul  Clifford  charges  on 
society  the  crimes  of  his  outlaw  career ;  when  Rienzi  vows  vengeance  for  his 
brother's  blood  ;  when  Zanoni  resigns  his  immortal  youth  that  "the  flower  at  his 
feet  may  a  little  longer  drink  the  dew  "  ;  when  Ernest  Maltravers  silently  laments 
amid  all  his  splendor  of  success  the  obscure  Arcadia  of  his  boyish  love,  we  can 
all  see  at  a  glance  how  bombastic,  gaudy,  melodramatic,  is  the  style  in  which  the 
author  works  out  his  ideas  ;  how  utterly  unlike  the  simple,  strong  majesty  of  true 
art  the  whole  thing  is  ;  but  yet  we  must  acknowledge  that  the  author  under- 
stands thoroughly  how  to  touch  a  certain  vein  of  what  may  be  called  elementary 
emotion,  common  almost  to  all  minds,  which  it  is  the  object  of  society  to  repress 
or  suppress,  and  the  object  of  the  popular  artist  to  stir  up  into  activity.  Preach, 
advise,  remonstrate,  demonstrate  as  you  will,  the  majority  of  us  will  always  feel 
inclined  to  give  alms  to  beggar-women  and  whining  little  children  in  the  snowy 
streets.  We  know  we  are  doing  unwisely,  and  perhaps  even  wrongly  ;  we  know 


162  EDWARD  BULWER,  LORD  LYTTON. 

that  the  misery  which  touches  us  is  probably  a  trumped-up  and  sham  misery  ; 
we  know  that  whatever  we  give  to  the  undeserving  and  the  insincere  is  practically 
withdrawn  from  the  deserving  and  the  sincere  ;  we  are  ashamed  to  be  seen  giving 
the  money,  and  yet  we  do  give  it  whenever  we  can.  Because,  after  all,  our  com- 
mon emotion  of  sympathy  with  the  more  obvious,  intelligible,  and  r  would  almost 
say  vulgar  forms  of  human  suffering,  are  far  too  strong  for  our  mi  derating  max- 
ims and  our  more  refined  mental  conditions.  So  of  the  sympathies  which  heroes 
and  heroines,  aspirations  and  agonies  of  the  style  of  Bulwer-Lytton  awaken  in 
us.  Virtue  cannot  so  inoculate  our  old  stock  but  we  shall  relish  it;  and  is  not 
he  something  of  ar  artis*  whc  recognizes  this  great  fact  in  human  nature,  and 
plays  upon  that  vibrating,  imperishable  chord,  and  compels  ii  to  give  him  back 
such  an  applauding  echo  ?  After  all,  I  think  there  is  just  as  much  of  sham  and 
of  Madame  Tussaud,  and  of  the  beggar-child  in  the  snow,  about  Paul  Dombey's 
deathbed  and  Little  Dorrit's  filial  devotion,  as  about  the  mock  heroics  of  Claude 
Melnotte  or  the  domestic  virtues  of  the  Caxtons.  Of  course  I  am  not  compar- 
ing Bulwer-Lytton  with  Dickens.  The  latter  was  a  man  of  genius,  and  one  of  the 
greatest  humorists  known  at  least  to  modern  literature.  But  nearly  all  the  pa- 
thetic side  of  Dickens  seems  to  me  of  much  the  same  origin  as  the  heroic  side 
of  Bulwer-Lytton,  and  I  question  whether  the  greater  part  of  the  popularity  won 
by  the  author  of  "  Bleak  House  "'has  not  been  gained  by  a  mastery  of  the  verv 
same  kind  of  art  as  that  which  sets  galleries  applauding  for  Claude  Melnotte,  and 
young  women  in  tears  for  Eugene  Aram. 

There  are,  moreover,  two  points  of  superiority  in  artistic  purpose  which  may 
be  claimed  for  Bulwer-Lytton  over  either  Dickens  or  Thackeray.  They  do  not, 
perhaps,  "amount  to  much"  in  any  case;  but  they  are  worth  mentioning.  Bul- 
wer-Lytton has  more  than  once  drawn  to  the  best  of  his  power  a  gentleman,  and 
he  has  often  drawn,  or  tried  to  draw,  a  man  possessed  by  some  great,  impersonal, 
unselfish  object  in  life.  The  former  of  these  personages  Dickens  never  seemed 
to  have  known  or  believed  in  ;  the  latter,  Thackeray  never  even  attempted  to 
paint.  Why  has  Dickens  never  drawn  a  gentleman  ?  I  am  not  using  the  word 
in  the  artificial,  conventional,  snobbish  sense.  I  mean  by  a  gentleman  a  creature 
with  intellect  as  well  as  heart,  with  refined  and  cultivated  tastes,  with  something 
of  personal  dignity  about  him.  I  do  not  care  from  what  origin  he  may  have 
sprung,  or  to  what  class  he  may  have  belonged  :  there  is  no  reason,  even  in  Eng- 
land, why  a  man  born  in  a  garret  might  not  acquire  all  the  ways,  and  thoughts, 
and  refinements  of  a  gentleman.  Among  the  class  to  which  most  of  Dickens's 
heroes  are  represented  as  belonging,  have  we  not  all  in  England  known  gentle- 
men of  intellect  and  culture  ?  Yet  Dickens  has  never  painted  such  a  being. 
Nicholas  Nickleby  is  a  plucky,  honest,  good-hearted  blockhead  ;  Tom  Pinch  is 
a  benevolent  idiot ;  Eugene  Wrayburn  is  a  low-bred,  impertinent  snob — a  mere 
"cad,"  as  Londoners  would  say.  I  have  had  no  sympathy  with  the  "Saturday 
Review"  in  its  perpetual  accusations  of  vulgarity  against  Dickens  ;  and  I  think 
a  recent  English  critic  was  pleasantly  and  purposely  extravagant  when  he  charged 
the  author  of  the  "  Christmas  Carol  "  with  having  no  loftier  idea  of  human  hap- 
piness than  the  eating  of  plum  pudding  and  kissing  girls  under  the  mistletoe. 
But  I  do  say  that  Dickens  never  drew  a  cultivated  English  gentleman  or  lady — a 
cultivated  and  refined  English  man  or  woman,  if  you  will ;  and  yet  I  know  that 
there  are  such  personages  to  be  found  without  troublesome  quest  among  the 
very  classes  of  society  which  he  was  always  describing. 

Now  Thackeray  could  draw  and  has  drawn  English  gentlemen  and  gentle- 
women;  but  has  he  ever  drawn  a  high-minded,  self-forgetting  man  or  woman 


163 

devoted  to  some,  to  any,  great  object,  or  cause,  or  purpose  of  any  kind  in  life — 
absorbed  by  it  and  faithful  to  it  ?  Is  it  true  that  even  in  London  society  men  are 
wholly  given  up  to  dining,  and  paying  visits,  and  making  and  spending  money? 
Is  it  true  that  all  men,  even  in  London  society,  pass  their  lives  in  a  purposeless, 
drifting  way,  making  good  resolves  and  not  carrying  them  out ;  doing  good  things 
now  and  then  out  of  easy,  generous  impulse  ;  loving  lightly,  and  recovering  from 
love  quickly  ?  Are  there  in  London  society,  on  the  one  hand,  no  passions  ;  on 
the  other  hand,  no  simple,  strong,  consistent,  unselfish,  high-minded  lives  ?  As- 
suredly there  are  ;  but  Thackeray,  the  greatest  painter  of  English  society  Eng- 
land has  ever  had,  chose,  for  some  reason  or  another,  to  ignore  them.  Only 
when  he  comes  to  speak  of  artists,  more  especially  of  painters,  does  he  ever 
hint  that  he  is  aware  of  the  existence  of  men  whose  lives  are  consistent,  stead- 
fast, and  unselfish.  Surely  this  is  a  great  omission.  One  does  not  care  to  drag 
into  this  discussion  the  names  of  living  illustrations  ;  but  I  should  like  to  have 
pointed  Thackeray's  attention  to  this  and  that  and  the  other  man  whom,  to  my 
certain  knowledge,  he  knew  and  warmly,  fully  appreciated,  and  asked  him, 
"  Why,  when  you  were  painting  with  such  incomparable  fidelity  such  illustrations 
of  English  life  as  you  chose  to  select,  did  you  not  think  fit  to  picture  such  a  sim- 
ple, strong,  consistent,  magnanimous,  self-forgetting,  self-devoting  nature  as  that, 
or  that,  or  that  ?  " — and  so  on,  through  many  examples  which  I  or  anybody  could 
have  named.  I  suppose  the  honest  answer  would  have  been,  "  I  cannot  draw 
that  kind  of  character  ;  I  cannot  quite  enter  into  its  experiences  and  make  it 
look  life-like  as  I  see  it;  it  is  not  in  my  line,  and  I  prefer  not  to  attempt  it." 
Now,  I  think  it  to  the  credit  of  Bulwer-Lytton,  as  a  mere  artist,  that  he  did  in- 
clude such  figures  even  in  his  wax-work  gallery.  He  could  not  make  them  look 
like  life  ;  but  he  showed  at  least  that  he  was  aware  of  their  existence,  and  that 
he  did  his  best  to  teach  the  world  to  recognize  them. 

Thus  then,  using  with  inexhaustible  energy  and  perseverance  his  wonderful 
gifts  as  an  intellectual  mechanician,  Edward  Bulwer-Lytton  went  on  from  1828 
to  1860  grinding  out  of  his  mill  an  almost  unbroken  succession  of  novels  and 
romances  to  suit  all  changes  in  public  taste.  I  do  not  believe  he  changed  his 
themes  and  ways  of  treating  them  purposely,  to  suit  the  changes  of  public  taste  ; 
but  rather  that,  being  a  man  of  no  true  original  and  creative  power,  his  style  and 
his  views  were  modified  by  the  modifying  conditions  of  successive  years.  Some 
new  idea,  some  new  way  of  looking  at  this  or  that  question  of  human  life  came 
up,  and  it  attracted  him  who  was  always  a  close  and  diligent  student  of  the  world 
and  its  fashions  ;  and  he  made  it  into  a  romance.  Whatever  new  schools  of 
fiction  came  into  existence,  Bulwer-Lytton,  always  directing  the  new  ideas  into 
the  channel  where  popular  and  elementary  sympathies  flowed  freely,  succeeded 
in  turning  each  change  to  advantage,  and  keeping  his  place.  Dickens  sprang 
up  and  founded  a  school ;  and  yet  Bulwer-Lytton  held  his  own.  Thackeray 
arose  and  established  a  new  school,  and  Bulwer-Lytton,  whom  no  human  being 
would  have  thought  of  comparing  with  either  as  a  man  of  genius,  did  not  lose  a 
reader.  Charlotte  Bronte  came  like  a  shadow,  and  so  departed  ;  George  Eliot 
gave  a  new  lift  and  life  to  romance  ;  the  realistic  school  was  followed  by  the 
sensational  school ;  the  Literature  of  Adultery  ran  its  vulgar  course — and  Bulwer- 
Lytton  remained  where  he  always  had  been,  and  moulted  no  feather. 

It  is  not  likely  that  any  true  critic  ever  thought  very  highly  of  him,  or  indeed 
took  him  quite  seriously  ;  but  for  many,  many  years  criticism,  which  had  so 
scoffed  and  girded  at  him  once,  had  only  civil  words  and  applauding  smiles  for 
him.  How  Thackeray  once  did  make  savage  fun  of  "Bullwig,"  and  more  lately 


164  EDWARD  BULWER,  LORD  LYTTON. 

how  Thackeray  praised  him  !  Charles  Dickens — what  an  enthusiastic  admirer  of 
the  genius  of  his  friend  Lytton  he  too  became  !  And  Tennyson — what  a  fierce  pas- 
sage of  arms  that  was  long  ago  between  Bulwer  and  him  ;  and  now  what  cordial 
mutual  admiration  !  Fonblanque  and  Forster,  the  "Athenaeum  "  and  "Punch," 
Tray,  Blanche,  and  Sweetheart — how  they  all  welcomed  in  chorus  each  new  effort 
of  genius  by  the  great  romancist  who  was  once  the  stock  butt  of  all  lively  satir- 
ists. How  did  this  happy  change  come  about  ?  Nobody  ever  had  harder  deal- 
ing at  the  hands  of  the  critics  than  Bulwer  when  his  powers  were  really  most 
fresh  and  forcible  ;  nobody  ever  had  more  general  and  genial  commendation  than 
shone  of  late  years  around  his  sunny  way.  How  was  this  ?  Did  the  critics 
really  find  that  they  had  been  mistaken  and  own  themselves  conquered  by  his 
transcendent  merit?  Did  he  "  win  the  wise  who  frowned  before  to  smile  at 
last"  ?  To  some  extent,  yes.  He  showed  that  he  was  not  to  be  written  down  ; 
that  no  critical  article  could  snuff  him  out;  that  he  really  had  some  stuff  in  him 
and  plenty  of  mettle  and  perseverance;  and  he  soon  became  a  literary  institu- 
tion, an  accomplished  fact  which  criticism  could  not  help  recognizing.  But  there 
was  much  more  than  this  operating  towards  Bulwer-Lytton's  reconciliation  with 
criticism.  He  became  a  wealthy  man,  a  man  of  fashion,  a  sort  of  aristocrat,  with 
yet  a  sincere  love  for  the  society  of  authors  and  artists,  with  a  taste  for  encour- 
aging private  theatricals  and  endowing  literary  institutions,  and  with  a  splendid 
country  house.  He  became  a  genial,  golden  link  between  literature  and  society. 
Even  Bohemia  was  enabled  by  his  liberal  and  courteous  good-will  to  penetrate 
sometimes  into  the  regions  of  Belgravia.  The  critics  began  to  fall  in  love  with 
him.  I  do  not  believe  that  Lord  Lytton  made  himself  thus  agreeable  to  his  lit- 
erary brethren  out  of  any  motive  whatever  but  that  of  honest  goodfellowship  and 
kindness.  I  have  heard  too  many  instances  of  his  frank  and  brotherly  friendli- 
ness to  utterly  obscure  writers,  who  could  be  of  no  sort  of  service  to  him  or  to 
anybody,  not  to  feel  satisfied  of  his  unselfish  good-nature  and  his  thorough  loy- 
alty to  that  which  ought  to  be  the  esprit  de  corps  of  the  literary  profession.  But 
it  is  certain  that  he  thus  converted  enemies  into  friends,  and  stole  the  gall  out  of 
many  an  inkstand,  and  the  poison  from  many  a  penman's  feathered  dart.  Not 
that  the  critics  simply  sold  their  birthright  of  bitterness  for  an  invitation  to  din- 
ner or  the  kindly  smile  of  a  literary  Peer.  But  you  cannot,  I  suppose,  deal  very 
rigidly  with  the  works  of  a  man  who  is  uniformly  kind  to  you  ;  who  brings  you 
into  a  sort  of  society  which  otherwise  you  would  probably  never  have  a  chance 
of  seeing ;  who,  being  himself  a  lord,  treats  you,  poor  critic,  as  a  friend  and 
brother ;  and  whose  works,  moreover,  are  certain  to  have  a  great  public  success, 
no  matter  what  you  say  or  leave  unsaid.  The  temptation  to  look  for  and  discov- 
er merit  in  such  books  is  strong  indeed — perhaps  too  strong  for  frail  critical  na- 
ture. Thus  arises  the  great  sin  of  English  criticism.  It  is  certainly  not  venal  ; 
it  is  hardly  ever  malign.  Mere  ill-nature,  or  impatience,  or  the  human  delight 
of  showing  one's  strength,  may  often  induce  a  London  critic  to  deal  too  sharply 
with  some  new  and  nameless  author  ;  but  although  we  who  write  books  are  each 
and  all  of  us  delighted  to  persuade  ourselves  that  any  disparaging  criticism  must 
be  the  result  of  some  personal  hatred,  I  cannot  remember  ever  having  had  serious 
reason  to  believe  that  a  London  critic  had  attacked  a  book  because  of  his  per- 
sonal ill-will  to  the  author.  The  sin  is  quite  of  another  kind — a  tendency  to 
praise  the  books  of  certain  authors  merely  because  the  critic  knows  the  men  so 
intimately,  and  likes  them  so  well,  that  he  is  at  once  naturally  prejudiced  in  their 
favor,  and  disinclined  to  say  anything  which  could  hurt  or  injure  them.  Thus 
of  late  criticism  has  had  hardly  anything  to  say  of  Lord  Lytton,  except  in  the  way 


EDWARD  BULWER,  LORD  LYTTON.  "16:, 

of  praise.  He  is  the  head,  and  patron,  and  ornament  of  a  great  London  literary 
"  Ring."  I  use  this  word  because  none  other  could  so  well  convey  to  a  reader  in 
New  York  a  clear  idea  of  the  friendly  professional  unity  of  the  coterie  I  desire  to 
describe;  but  I  wish  it  to  be  distinctly  understood  that  I  do  not  attribute  any- 
thing like  venality  or  hired  partisanship  of  any  kind  to  the  literary  Ring  of  which 
Lord  Lytton  is  the  sparkling  gem.  Of  course  it  has  become,  as  such  cliques  al- 
ways must  become,  somewhat  of  a  Mutual  Admiration  Society  ;  and  it  is  certain 
that  a  place  in  that  brotherhood  secures  a  man  against  much  disparaging  criti- 
cism. There  are  indeed  literary  cliques  in  London,  of  a  somewhat  lower  range 
than  this,  where  the  influence  of  personal  friendships  does  operate  in  a  manner 
that  closely  borders  upon  a  sort  of  literary  corruption.  But  Lord  Lytton  and 
his  friends  and  admirers  are  not  of  that  sort.  They  are  friends  together,  and 
they  do  admire  each  other,  and  I  suppose  everybody  (save  one  person)  likes  Lord 
Lytton  now ;  and  so  it  is  only  in  the  rare  case  of  a  fresh,  independent  outsider, 
like  the  critic  who  wrote  in  the  "Westminster  Review"  some  two  years  ago, 
that  a  really  impartial,  keen,  artistic  survey  is  taken  of  the  works  of  him  that 
was  "Bullwig/1  When  Lytton  published  his  "  Caxtons,"  the  reviewer  of  the 
"Examiner,"  even  up  to  that  time  a  journal  of  great  influence  and  prestige,  hav- 
ing nearly  exhausted  all  possible  modes  of  panegyric,  bethought  himself  that  som* 
unappreciative  and  cynical  persons  might  possibly  think  there  was  a  lack  of  origi- 
nality in  a  wo.k  so  obviously  constructed  after  the  model  of  "Tristram  Shandy." 
So  he  hastened  to  confute  or  convince  all  such  persons  by  pointing  out  that  ia 
this  very  fact  consisted  the  special  claim  of  "The  Caxtons  "  to  absolute  origi- 
nality. The  original  genius  of  Lytton  was  proved  by  his  producing  so  excellent 
a  copy.  Don't  you  see?  You  don't,  perhaps.  But  then  if  you  were  intimate 
with  Lord  Lytton,  and  were  liked  by  him,  and  were  a  performer  in  the  private 
theatricals  at  Knebworth,  his  country  seat,  you  would  probably  see  it  quite 
clearly,  and  agree  with  it,  every  word. 

There  was  one  person  indeed  who  had  no  toleration  for  Lord  Lytton,  or  for  his 
friendly  critics.  That  was  Lord  Lytton's  wife.  There  really  is  no  scandal  in  allud- 
ing to  a  conjugal  quarrel  which  was  brought  so  persistently  under  public  notice  by 
one  of  the  parties  as  that  between  Buhver- Lytton  and  his  wife.  I  do  not  know 
whether  I  ought  to  call  it  a  quarrel.  Can  that  be  called  a  fight,  piteously  asks  the 
man  in  Juvenal,  where  my  enemy  only  beats  and  I  am  merely  beaten  ?  Can  that  be 
called  a  quarrel  in  which,  so  far  as  the  public  could  judge,  the  wife  did  all  the  denun- 
ciation, and  the  husband  made  no  reply  ?  Lady  Lytton  wrote  novels  for  the  pur- 
pose of  satirizing  her  husband  and  his  friends — his  parasites,  she  called  them. 
Bulwer- Lytton  she  gracefully  described  as  having  "the  head  of  a  goat  on  the 
body  of  a  grasshopper" — a  description  which  has  just  enough  of  comical  truth- 
fulness in  its  savage  ferocity  to  make  it  specially  cruel  to  the  victim  of  the  sa- 
tire, and  amusing  to  the  unconcerned  public.  Lady  Lytton  attributed  to  her 
husband  the  most  odious  meannesses,  vices,  and  cruelties  ;  but  the  public,  with  all 
its  love  of  scandal,  seems  to  have  steadfastly  refused  to  take  her  ladyship's  word 
for  these  accusations.  Dickens  she  denounced  and  vilified  as  a  mere  parasite 
and  sycophant  of  her  husband.  At  one  time  she  poured  out  a  gush  of  fulsome  eulogy 
on  Thackeray  because  he  apparently  was  not  one  of  Lytton's  friends  ;  afterwards, 
when  the  relationship  between  "  Pelham  "  and  "  Pendennis  "  became  friendly, 
she  changed  her  tune  and  tried  to  bite  the  file,  to  satirize  the  great  satirist. 
Disraeli  she  caricatured  under  the  title  of  "Jericho  Jabber."  This  sort  of  thing 
she  kept  always  going  on.  Sometimes  she  issued  pamphlets  addressed  to  the 
women  of  England,  calling  on  them  to  take  up  her  quarrel — which  somehow 


Ififi  EDWARD  13ULWER,  LORD  LYTTON. 

they  did  not  seem  inclined  to  do.  Once  when  Lord  Lytton,  then  only  Sir  Ed- 
ward, was  on  the  hustings,  addressing  his  constituents  at  a  county  election,  her 
ladyship  suddenly  mounted  the  platform  and  "went  for"  him.  Sir  Edward 
and  his  friends  prudently  and  quietly  withdrew.  I  do  not  know  anything  of  the 
merits  of  the  quarrel,  and  have  always  been  disposed  to  think  that  something 
like  insanity  must  have  been  the  explanation  of  much  of  Lady  Lytton's  conduct. 
But  it  is  beyond  doubt  that  her  husband's  demeanor  was  remarkable  for  its 
quiet,  indomitable  patience  and  dignity.  Lately  the  public  has  happily  heard 
little  of  Lady  Lytton's  complaints.  I  did  not  even  know  whether  she  was  still 
living,  until  I  saw  a  little  book  announced  the  other  day  by  some  publisher, 
which  bore  her  name.  Let  her  pass — with  the  one  remark  that  her  long  suc- 
cession of  bitter  attacks  upon  her  husband  does  not  seem  to  have  done  him 
any  damage  in  the  estimation  of  the  world. 

It  is  not  likely  that  posterity  will  preserve  much  of  Lord  Lytton's  writings. 
They  do  not,  I  think,  add  to  literature  one  original  character.  Even  the  glori- 
fied murderer  or  robber,  the  Eugene  Aram  or  Paul  Clifford  sort  of  person,  had 
been  done  and  done  much  better  by  Schiller,  by  Godwin,  and  by  others,  before 
Bulwer- Lytton  tried  him  at  second  hand.  As  pictures  of  English  society,  those 
of  them  which  profess  to  deal  with  modern  English  life  have  no  value  whatever. 
The  historical  novels,  the  classical  novels,  are  glaringly  false  in  their  color  and 
tone.  Some  of  the  personages  in  "  The  Last  Days  of  Pompeii  "  are  a  good 
deal  more  like  modern  English  dandies  than  most  of  the  people  who  are  given 
out  as  such  in  "  Pelham."  The  attempts  at  political  satire  in  "Paul  Clifford," 
at  broad  humor  in  "  Eugene  Aram  "  (the  Corporal  and  his  cat  for  example),  are 
feeble  and  miserable.  There  is  hardly  one  touch  of  refined  and  genuine  pathos 
•—of  pathos  drawn  from  other  than  the  old  stock  conventional  sources — in  the 
whole  of  the  romances,  plays,  and  poems.  The  one  great  faculty  which  the 
author  possessed  was  the  capacity  to  burnish  up  and  display  the  absolutely  com- 
monplace, the  merely  conventional,  the  utterly  unreal,  so  that  it  looked  new, 
original,  and  real  in  the  eyes  of  the  ordinary  public,  and  sometimes  even  suc- 
ceeded, for  the  hour,  in  deceiving  the  expert.  Bulwer-Lytton's  romance  is  only 
the  romance  of  the  London  "  Family  Herald  "  or  the  "  New  York  Ledger,"  plus 
high  intellectual  culture  and  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  best  spheres  of 
letters,  art,  and  fashion.  I  own  that  I  have  considerable  admiration  for  the  man 
who,  with  so  small  an  original  outfit,  accomplished  so  much.  So  successful  a 
romancist ;  occasionally  almost  a  sort  of  poet;  a  perfect  master  of  the  art  of 
writing  plays  to  catch  audiences  ;  so  skilful  an  imitator  of  oratory  that,  despite 
almost  unparalleled  physical  defects,  he  once  nearly  persuaded  the  world  that 
his  was  genuine  eloquence — who  shall  say  that  the  capacity  which  can  do  all 
this  is  not  something  to  be  admired  ?  It  is  a  clever  thing  to  be  able  to  make 
ornaments  of  paste  which  shall  pass  with  the  world  for  diamonds  ;  mock-turtle 
soup  which  shall  taste  like  real  ;  wax  figures  which  look  at  first  as  if  they  were 
alive.  Of  the  literary  art  which  is  akin  to  this,  our  common  literature  has  prob- 
ably never  had  so  great  a  master  as  Lord  Lytton.  Such  a  man  is  especially  the 
one  to  stand  up  as  the  appropriate  representative  of  literature  in  such  an  assem- 
bly as  the  English  House  of  Lords.  I  should  be  sorry  to  see  a  Browning,  a 
Thackeray,  a  Carlyle,  a  Tennyson,  a  Dickens  there ;  but  I  think  Lord  Lytton 
is  in  his  right  place — a  splendid  sham  author  in  a  splendid  sham  legislative 
assembly. 


"PAR  MOBILE   FRATRUM— THE  TWO  NEWMANS." 


*  6  fTlHE  truth,  friend,"  exclaims  Mr.  Arthur  Pendennis,  debating  some  ques- 
1  tion  with  his  comrade  Warrington ;  "  where  is  the  truth?  Show  it  me. 
I  see  it  on  both  sides.  I  see  it  in  this  man  who  worships  by  act  of  Parliament, 
and  is  rewarded  with  a  silk  apron  and  five  thousand  a  year ;  in  that  man  who, 
driven  fatally  by  the  remorseless  logic  of  his  creed,  gives  up  everything, 
friends,  fame,  dearest  ties,  closest  vanities,  the  respect  of  an  army  of  churchmen, 
the  recognized  position  of  a  leader,  and  passes  over,  truth-impelled,  to  the 
enemy  in  whose  ranks  he  is  ready  to  serve  henceforth  as  a  nameless  private 
soldier ;  I  see  the  truth  in  that  man  as  I  do  in  his  brother,  whose  logic  drives 
him  to  quite  a  different  conclusion,  and  who,  after  having  passed  a  life  in  vain 
endeavors  to  reconcile  an  irreconcilable  book,  flings  it  at  last  down  in  despair, 
and  declares,  with  tearful  eyes  and  hands  up  to  heaven,  his  revolt  and  recanta- 
tion." 

Perhaps  many  American  readers,  meeting  with  this  passage,  may  have 
supposed  that  the  two  brothers  here  described  were  merely  typical  figures,  in- 
vented almost  at  random  by  Thackeray  to  enable  Pendennis  to  point  his  moral 
But  in  England  people  know  that  the  two  brothers  are  real  personages,  and 
still  live.  I  saw  one  of  them  a  few  nights  ago,  the  one  last  mentioned  by  Ar 
thur  Pendennis.  I  saw  him,  as  he  is  indeed  often  to  be  seen,  the  centre  and 
leader  of  a  little  group  or  knot,  a  hopeless  minority,  vainly  striving  by  force 
of  argument  and  logic,  of  almost  unlimited  erudition,  and  a  keen  bright  intel- 
lect, to  obtain  public  attention  for  something  which  the  public  persisted  in  re- 
garding as  an  idle  crotchet,  an  impotent  craze.  The  other  brother,  the  elder, 
is  a  man  whose  secession  from  the  Church  of  England  has  lately  been  described 
by  Disraeli,  in  the  preface  to  the  collected  edition  of  his  works,  as  having 
"  dealt  a  blow  to  the  Church  under  which  it  still  reels."  "  That  extraordinary 
event,"  says  Disraeli,  "has  been  '  apologized  for '  but  has  never  been  explained. 
It  was  a  mistake  and  a  misfortune."  Probably  no  reader  of  "  The  Galaxy  " 
will  now  need  to  be  told  that  the  typical  brothers  alluded  to  by  Pendennis  are 
John  Henry  and  Francis  W.  Newman. 

The  Atlantic  deals  curiously  and  capriciously  with  reputations.  Both 
these  brothers  Newman  seem  to  me  to  be  less  known  in  America  than  they 
deserve  to  be.  John  Henry  in  especial  I  found  to  be  thus  comparatively  ig- 
nored in  the  United  States.  He  is  beyond  doubt  one  of  the  greatest,  certainly 
one  of  the  most  influential  Englishmen  of  our  time.  He  has  engraved  his 
name  deeply  on  the  history  of  his  age.  He  has  led  perhaps  the  most  remark- 
able religious  movement  known  to  England  for  generations.  He  is  one  of  the 
very  few  men  whose  lofty  and  commanding  intellect  has  been  acknowledged 
and  admired  by  all  sects  and  parties.  Gather  together  any  company  of  emi- 
nent Englishmen,  however  select  in  its  composition,  however  splendid  in  its 
members,  and  John  Henry  Newman  will  be  among  the  few  especially  conspic- 
uous. 

Perhaps  most  of  my  readers  will  be  of  opinion  that  Newman's  intellect 
lias  been  sadly  misused ;  that  his  influence  has  been  for  the  most  part  disastrous. 
But  no  one  who  knows  anything  of  the  subject  can  deny  the  greatness  alike  of 
the  intellect  and  of  the  influence.  Let  me  add,  too,  that  no  enemy  ever  yet 


168  "PAR  NOBILE  FRATRUM— THE  TWO  NEWMANS." 

called  into  question  the  simple  sincerity,  the  blameless  purity  of  John  Henry 
Newman's  purposes  and  character.  Of  later  years  he  has  been  rarely  seen  in 
London,  for  his  duties  keep  him  in  Birmingham,  where  he  is  at  the  head  of  a 
religious  and  educational  institution.  I  have  heard  that  years  are  telling  heav- 
ily on  him,  and  that  when  he  now  preaches  he  is  listened  to  with  the  kind  of 
half-melancholy  reverence  which  hangs  on  the  words  of  a  great  man  who  is 
already  beginning  to  be  a  portion  of  the  past.  But  his  influence  was  a  power 
almost  unequalled  in  its  day,  and  that  day  has  not  yet  wholly  faded. 

The  Newman  brothers  are  Londoners  by  birth,  sons  of  a  wealthy  banker  of 
Lombard  street — the  British  Wall  street.  Both  were  educated  at  Ealing  school, 
and  both  went  to  the  University  of  Oxford.  John  Henry  is  by  some  four  years 
the  senior  of  Francis,  who  was  born  in  1805,  and  who  now  looks  at  least  a 
dozen  or  iifteen  years  younger  than  his  distinguished  brother.  Both  men  vvc.re 
endowed  with  remarkable  gifts;  both  had  a  splendid  faculty  of  acquiring 
knowledge.  John  Henry  Newman  became  a  clergyman  of  the  Established 
Church.  He  was  a  close  and  intimate  friend  of  Keble,  of  Pusey,  and  of  Man- 
ning. He  grew  to  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  rising  stars  of  Protestantism. 
No  name,  soon,  stood  higher  than  his.  His  friends  loved  him,  and  Protestant 
England  began  to  revere  him.  Now  observe  the  change  that  came  on  these 
two  brothers,  alike  so  gifted  and  earnest,  alike  so  wooed  by  the  promise  of 
brilliant  worldly  career.  Two  movements  of  thought,  having  perhaps  a  com- 
mon origin  in  the  dissatisfaction  with  the  existing  intellectual  stagnation  of 
the  Church,  but  tending  in  widely  different  directions,  carried  the  brothers 
along  with  them — "seized,"  to  use  the  words  of  Richter,  "  their  bleeding  hearts 
and  flung  them  different  ways."  The  younger  brother  found  himself  drawn 
toward  rationalism.  He  could  not  subscribe  the  Thirty-Nine  Articles  for  his  de- 
gree as  a  Master ;  he  left  Oxford.  He  wandered  for  years  in  the  East,  endeavor- 
ing, not  very  successfully,  to  teach  Christianity  on  its  broadest  basis  to  the  Mo- 
hammedans ;  and  he  finally  returned  to  England  to  take  his  place  among  the 
leaders  of  that  school  of  free  thought  which  the  ignorant,  the  careless,  or  the 
malignant  set  down  as  infidelity.  In  the  mean  time  his  brother  became  one  of 
the  pioneers  of  a  still  more  unexpected  movement.  In  the  English  Church 
for  a  long  time  everything  had  seemed  to  be  settled  and  at  rest.  The  old 
controversy  with  Rome  appeared  out  of  date,  unnecessary,  and  perhaps  vulgar. 
Everything  was  just  as  it  should  be — stable  and  respectable.  But  it  suddenly 
occurred  to  some  earnest,  unresting  sonls,  like  that  of  Keble — souls  "without 
haste  and  without  rest,"  like  Goethe's  star — to  insist  that  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land had  higher  claims  and  nobler  duties  than  those  of  preaching  harmless 
sermons  and  enriching  bishops.  Keble  could  not  bear  to  think  of  the  Church 
taking  pleasure  since  all  is  well.  He  urged  on  some  of  the  more  vigorous  and 
thoughtful  minds  around  him  that  they  should  reclaim  for  the  Church  the  place 
which  ought  to  be  hers  as  the  true  successor  of  the  Apostles.  He  claimed  for 
her  that  she,  and  she  alone,  was  the  real  Catholic  Church,  authorized  to  teach 
all  nations,  and  that  Rome  had  wandered  away  from  the  right  path,  foregone 
the  glorious  mission  which  she  might  have  maintained.  One  of  Keble's  clos- 
est and  dearest  friends  was  John  Henry  Newman,  and  Keble  regarded  New- 
man as  a  man  qualified  beyond  all  others  to  become  the  teacher  and  leader  of 
the  new  movement.  Keble  preached  a  famous  sermon  in  1838,  and  inau- 
givrated  the  publication  of  a  series  of  tracts  designed  to  vindicate  the  real  mis- 
sion of  the  Church  of  England.  This  was  the  Tractarian  movement,  which  had 
early,  various,  and  memorable  results.  John  Henry  Newman  wrote  the  most 


"PAR  NOBILE  FRATRUM— THE  TWO  NEWMANS."          169 

celebrated  of  all  the  tracts,  the  famous  "No.  90,"  which  drew  down  the  censure 
of  the  University  authorities  on  the  ground  that  it  actually  tended  to  abolish 
all  difference  between  the  Church  of  England  and  the  Church  of  Rome.  Yet 
a  little,  and  the  gradual  workings  of  Xewman's  mind  became  evident  to  all  the 
world.  The  brightest  and  most  penetrating  intellect  in  the  English  Protestant 
Church  was  publicly  and  deliberately  withdrawn  from  her  service,  and  John 
Henry  Xe\vman  became  a  priest  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  To  tliis  had  the  in- 
quiry conducted  him  which  led  his  friend  Dr.  Pusey  merely  to  endeavor  to 
incorporate  some  of  the  mysticism  and  the  symbols  of  Some  with  the  practk-e 
and  the  progress  of  the  English  Church;  which  had  led  Dr.  Kcble  only  to  a 
more  liberal  and  truly  Christianlike  temper  of  Protestant  faith;  which  had 
sent  Francis  Newman  into  radical  rationalism.  The  two  brothers  were  intel- 
lectually divided  forever.  Each  renounced  a  career  rich  in  promise  for  mere 
conscience'  sake ;  and  the  one  went  this  way,  the  other  that. 

Disraeli  has  in  no  wise  exaggerated  the  depth  and  painfulness  of  the  sensa- 
tion produced  among  English  Protestants  by  the  secession  of  John  Henry 
Newman.  It  was  of  course  received  upon  the  opposite  side  with  correspond- 
ing exultation.  No  man,  indeed,  could  be  less  qualified  than  Mr.  Disraeli  to 
understand  the  tremendous,  the  irresistible  force  of  conviction  in  a  nature  like 
that  of  Newman.  The  brilliant  master  of  political  tactics  has  made  it  evident 
that  he  did  not  understand  the  motive  of  Newman's  secession  any  more  than  he 
did  the  meaning  of  the  title  of  Newman's  celebrated  book,  "Apologia  pi-o  Vita 
sua."  "  That  extraordinary  event,"  says  Disraeli,  speaking  of  the  secession, 
"  has  been  apologized  for,  but  has  never  been  explained."  Evidently  Disraeli 
believed  that  the  English  word  "  apology  "  is  the  correct  translation  of  the  Lat- 
inized  Greek  word  "  apologia,"  which  it  most  certainly  is  not.  Nothing  could 
have  been  further  from  Newman's  mind  or  from  the  purpose,  or  indeed  from 
the  title  of  his  book,  than  to  apologize  for  his  secession.  On  the  contrary,  the 
book  is  sharply  and  pertinaciously  aggressive.  It  was  called  forth  by  an  at- 
tack made  on  Dr.  Newman  by  the  Rev.  Charles  Kingsley.  I  think  Kingsley 
was  in  the  main  right  in  his  views,  but  he  was  rough  and  blundering  in  his  ex- 
pression of  them,  and  he  is  about  as  well  qualified  to  carry  on  a  controversy 
with  John  Henry  Newman  as  Governor  Hoffman  would  be  to  undertake  a 
rhetorical  competition  with  Mr.  Wendell  Phillips.  Kingsley's  bluff,  rude,  illo- 
gical way  of  fighting,  his  "  wild  and  skipping  spirit,"  were  placed  at  ludicrous 
and  fearful  disadvantage.  Newman  "  went  for  him  "  unsparingly,  and  literally 
tore  him  with  the  beak  and  claws  of  logic,  satire,  and  invective.  One  was  re- 
minded of  Pascal's  attacks  on  the  Jesuits — only  that  this  time  the  wit  and 
power  were  on  the  side  which  might  fairly  be  called  Jesuitical.  Out  of  this 
merciless  onslaught  on  Kingsley  came  the  "Apologia  pro  Vita  sufi,"  in  which 
Newman  endeavored  to  vindicate  and  glorify,  not  excuse  or  apologize  for,  his 
strange  secession.  The  book  is  well  worth  reading,  if  only  as  a  curious  illus- 
tration of  the  utter  inadequacy  of  human  intellect  and  human  logic  to  secure  a 
soul  from  the  strangest  wandering,  the  saddest  possible  illusion.  You  cannot 
read  a  page  of  it  without  admiration  for  the  intellect  of  the  author,  and  without 
pity  for  the  poverty  even  of  the  richest  intellectual  gifts  where  guidance  is 
sought  in  a  faith  and  in  things  which  transcend  the  limits  of  human  logic. 

John  Henry  Newman  threw  his  whole  soul,  energy,  genius,  and  fame  into 
the  cause  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  Rome  welcomed  him  with  that  cor- 
dial welcome  she  always  gives  to  a  new-comer,  and  she  utilized  him  and  set 
work  for  him  to  do.  Macaulay  has  shown  very  effectively  in  one  of  his  essays 


170          'TAR  NOBILE  FRATRUM— THE  TWO  NEWMANS." 

how  tho  Roman  Church  seldom  loses  any  one  it  has  gained,  because  it  is  so 
skilful  iu.  finding  for  everybody  his  proper  place,  and  assigning  him  in  her  ser- 
vice the  task  he  is  best  qualilied  to  do,  so  that  her  ambition  becomes  his  ambi- 
tion, her  interest  his  interest,  her  conquests  his  conquests.  Newman  appears 
to  have  been  made  a  sort  of  missionary  from  Rome  to  the  intellect  and  culture 
of  the  English  people.  Within  the  Church  to  which  he  had  gone  over  he  be- 
came an  immense  influence  and  almost  unequalled  power.  The  Catholics  de- 
lighted to  have  a  leader  whose  intellect  no  one  could  pretend  to  despise,  whoso 
gifts  and  culture  had  been  panegyrized  in  the  most  glowing  terms,  over  and 
over  again,  by  the  foremost  statesmen  and  divines  of  the  Protestant  Church. 
Newman  was  appointed  head  of  the  oratory  of  St.  Philip  Neri  at  Birmingham, 
and  was  for  some  years  rector  of  the  Roman  Catholic  University  of  Dublin. 
He  rarely  came  before  the  public.  In  all  the  arts  that  make  an  orator  or  a 
great  preacher  he  is  strikingly  deficient.  His  manner  is  constrained,  awk- 
ward, and  even  ungainly ;  his  voice  is  thin  and  weak.  His  bearing  is  not  im- 
pressive. His  gaunt,  emaciated  figure,  his  sharp,  eagle  face,  his  cold,  medita- 
tive eye,  rather  repel  than  attract  those  who  see  him  for  the  first  time.  The 
matter  of  his  discourse,  whether  sermon,  speech,  or  lecture,  is  always  admir- 
able, and  the  language  is  concise,  scholarly,  expressive — perhaps  a  little  over- 
weighted with  thought;  but  there  is  nothing  there  of  the  orator.  It  is  as  a 
writer,  and  as  an  "  influence  " — I  don't  know  how  better  to  express  it — that 
Newman  has  become  famous.  I  doubt  if  we  have  many  better  prose  writers. 
He  is  full  of  keen,  pungent,  satirical  humor ;  and  there  is,  on  the  other  hand,  a 
subtle  vein  of  poetry  and  of  pathos  suffusing  nearly  all  he  writes.  One  of  the 
finest  and  one  of  the  most  frequently  quoted  passages  in  modern  English  liter- 
uttire  is  Newman's  touching  and  noble  apostrophe  to  England's  "Saxon 
Bible."  He  has  published  volumes  of  verse  which  I  think  belong  to  the  very 
highest  order  of  verse-making  that  is  not  genuine  poetry.  They  are  full  of 
thought,  feeling,  pathos,  tenderness,  beauty  of  illustration;  they  are  all  that 
verse  can  be  made  by  one  who  just  fails  to  be  a  poet.  An  English  critical  re- 
view not  long  since  classed  the  poetical  works  of  Dr.  Newman  and  George  Eliot 
together,  as  the  nearest  approach  which  intellect  and  culture  have  made  in  our 
days  toward  the  production  of  genuine  poetry.  When  Newman  made  his  fa- 
mous attack  on  Dr.  Achilli,  an  Italian  priest  who  had  renounced  the  Roman 
Church,  and  whom  Newman  publicly  accused  of  many  crimes,  the  judge  who 
had  to  sentence  the  accuser  to  the  payment  of  a  fine  for  libel  pronounced  a 
panegyric  on  his  intellect  and  his  character  such  as  is  rarely  heard  from  an 
English  judgment  seat.  Not  long  after,  when  the  subject  came  up  somehow  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  Mr.  Gladstone  broke  into  an  encomium  of  John  Henry 
Newman  which  might  have  seemed  poetical  by  hyperbole  to  those  who  did  not 
know  the  merits  of  the  one  man  and  the  conscientious  truthfulness  of  the 
other.  We  have  heard  the  testimony  borne  by  Mr.  Disraeli  to  the  importance 
of  Newman's  intellect  as  a  support  of  the  English  Church,  and  the  shock  which 
was  caused  by  his  withdrawal.  Seldom,  indeed,  has  a  man  seceded  from  one 
church  and  become  the  aggressive,  unsparing,  intolerant  champion  of  its 
enemy,  and  yet  retained  the  esteem  and  the  affection  of  those  whom  he 
abandoned,  as  this  good,  great,  mistaken  Englishman  has  done. 

The  two  brothers  then  are  hopelessly  divided.  One  consorts  with  tho  Pope 
and  Cardinal  Wiseman  and  Archbishop  Manning,  and  is  the  idol  and  saint  of 
the  Ultramontanes,  and  devotes  his  noble  intellect  to  the  task  of  making  the 
Irish  Catholic  a  more  bigoted  Catholic  than  ever.  The  other  falls  in  with  the 


"PAR  XOBILE  FRATRUM— THE  TWO  NEWMANS."          171 

little  band,  that  once  seemed  a  forlorn  hope,  of  what  we  may  call  the  philo- 
sophical radicals  of  England.  lie  becomes  a  professor  of  the  rationalistic 
University  of  London,  and  a  contributor  to  the  free-thinking  "  Westminster 
Review."  Judging  each  brother's  success  merely  by  what  each  sought  to  do, 
I  suppose  the  career  of  the  Catholic  has  been  the  more  successful.  Not  that  I 
think  he  has  made  much  way  toward  the  conversion  of  England  to  Catholi- 
cism. With  all  its  Puseyism  and  ritualism,  England  seems  to  hav.e  little  real 
inclination  toward  the  doctrines  of  Rome.  There  is  indeed  a  distinguished 
"  convert"  every  now  and  then — the  Marquis  of  Bute  some  two  years  ago, 
Lord  Robert  Montagu  last  year ;  but  the  great  mass  of  the  English  people  re- 
main obstinately  anti-papal.  The  tendency  is  far  more  toward  Rationalism 
than  toward  Romanism ;  with  the  Newman  \vho  withdrew  from  all  churches 
rather  than  with  the  Newman  who  renounced  one  church  to  enter  another. 
Therefore,  when  I  say  that  the  career  of  John  Newman  appears  to  me  to  have 
boon  more  successful  than  that  of  Francis,  I  mean  only  that  he  has  been  a 
greater  influence,  a  more  powerful  instrument  of  his  cause  than  his  brother 
ever  has  been.  The  bsast  was  made  unjustly  for  Voltaire  that  he  almost  ar- 
rested the  progress  of  Christianity  in  Europe.  I  think  the  admirers  of  John 
Newman  might  claim  for  him  that  he  actually  did  for  a  time  at  least  arrest  the 
progress  of  Protestantism  in  England.  He  had  indeed  the  great  advantage  of 
passing  from  one  organization  to  another.  Like  Coriolanus,  when  he  seceded 
he  became  the  leader  of  the  enemy's  army.  It  was  quite  otherwise  with  his 
brother,  who  leaving  the  English  Church  was  thenceforward  only  an  individual, 
and  for  the  most  part  an  isolated  worker.  But  indeed,  with  all  his  intellect,  his 
high  culture,  and  his  indomitable  courage,  Francis  Newman  has  never  been  an 
influential  man  in  English  politics.  It  may  be  that  his  keen  logic  is  too  un- 
compromising; and  there  can  be  no  practical  statesmanship  without  compro- 
mise. It  may  be  that  there  is  something  eccentric,  egotistic  (in  the  less  offen- 
sive sense),  and  crotchety  in  that  sharp,  independent,  and  self-sufficing  intelli- 
gence. Whatever  the  reason,  nine  out  often  men  in  London  set  down  Francis 
Newman  as  hopelessly  given  over  to  crotchets,  while  the  tenth  man,  admiring 
however  much  his  character  and  his  capacity,  is  sometimes  grieved  and  some- 
times provoked  that  both  together  do  not  make  him  a  greater  power  in  the  na- 
tion. I  never  remember  Francis  Newman  to  have  been  in  accord  with  what 
I  may  call  the  average  public  opinion  of  English  political  life,  except  in  one 
instance;  and  in  that  case  I  believe  him  to  have  been  wrong.  He  was  in 
favor  of  the  Crimean  war;  and  for  this  once  therefore  he  found  himself  on  the 
side  of  the  majority.  As  if  to  mark  the  contrast  of  views  which  it  has  been 
the  fate  of  these  two  brothers  to  present  during  their  lives,  it  so  happened  that, 
so  far  as  John  Henry's  opinions  on  the  subject  could  be  learned  by  the  public, 
they  were  against  the  war.  At  least  they  were  decidedly  against  the  Turks. 
I  remember  hearing  him  deliver  at  that  time  a  course  of  lectures  in  an  educa- 
tional institution,  having  for  their  subject  the  origin  and  the  results  of  the 
Ottoman  settlement  in  Europe.  I  well  remember  how  effectively  and  vividly 
hi-  argued,  with  his  thin  voice  and  his  constrained,  ungraceful  action,  that  the 
Turk  had  no  greater  moral  right  to  the  territory  he  occupies,  but  does  not  culti- 
vate and  improve,  than  the  pirate  has  to  the  sea  over  which  he  sails.  But 
Francis  Newman  was  then  for  once  mixed  up  with  the  majority;  and  I  doubt 
whether  he  could  have  much  liked  the  unwonted  position.  He  certainly  took 
care  to  explain  more  than  once  that  his  reasons  for  taking  that  side  were  not 
those  of  the  average  Englishman.  He  thus  might  have  given  some  of  his 
casual  associates  occasion  to  say  of  him,  as  Charles  Mathews  says  of  woman 


172  "PAR  NOBILE  FRATRUM— THE  TWO  NEWMANS." 

in  general,  that  even  when  he  is  right  he  is  right  in  a  wrong  sort  of 
way.  For  myself  I  am  inclined  to  reverse  the  saying,  and  declare  of  Francis 
Newman  that  even  when  he  is  wrong  he  is  wrong  in  a  right  sort  of  way.  He 
was  right,  and  in  a  very  right  sort  of  way,  when  he  came  out  from  his  habitual 
seclusion  during  the  American  civil  war,  and  stood  up  on  many  a  platform  for 
the  cause  of  the  Union.  Like  his  brother,  he  is  a  poor  public  speaker.  At  his 
very  best  he  is  the  professor  talking  to  his  class,  not  the  orator  addressing  a 
crowd.  His  manner  is  singulai'ly  constrained,  ineffective,  and  even  awkward ; 
his  voice  is  thin  and  weak.  There  is  a  certain  very  small  and  rare  class  of 
bad  speakers,  which  has  yet  a  virtue  and  charm  of  its  own  almost  equal  to  elo- 
quence. I  am  now  thinking  of  men  utterly  wanting  in  all  the  arts  and  graces, 
in  all  the  power  and  effect  of  rhetorical  delivery,  but  who  yet  with  whatever 
defect  of  manner  can  say  such  striking  things,  can  put  such  noble  thoughts  into 
expressive  words,  can  be  so  entirely  original  and  so  completely  masters  of  their 
subject,  that  they  seem  to  be  orators  in  all  but  voice  and  manner.  Horace 
Greeley  always  is,  to  me  at  least,  such  a  speaker;  so  is  Stuart  Mill.  These  are 
bad  speakers  as  Jane  Eyre  or  Consuelo  may  have  been  an  unlovely  woman ; 
all  the  rules  declare  against  them,  all  the  intelligences  and  sympathies  are  in 
their  favor.  But  Francis  Newman  is  not  a  speaker  of  this  kind.  He  is  feeble,  i  n- 
elfective,  and  often  even  commonplace.  Nature  has  denied  to  him  the  faculty  of 
adequately  expressing  himself  in  spoken  words.  He  is  almost  as  much  out  of  hi.s 
element  when  addressing  a  public  meeting  as  he  would  be  if  ho  were  singing 
In  an  opera.  Few  Englishmen  living  can  claim  to  be  the  intellectual  superiors 
of  Francis  Newman;  but  you  would  never  know  Francis  Newman  by  hearing 
him  speak  on  a  platform.  The  last  time  I  heard  him  address  a  public  meeting 
was  on  an  occasion  to  which  I  have  already  alluded.  He  was  presiding  over 
an  assemblage  called  together  to  protest  against  compulsory  vaccination.  The 
Government  and  Parliament  have  lately  made  very  stringent  the  enactment  for 
compulsory  vaccination,  in  consequence  of  the  terrible  increase  of  small-pox. 
There  is  in  London,  as  in  all  other  great  capitals,  a  certain  knot  of  persons  who 
would  refuse  to  wash  their  faces  or  kiss  their  wives  if  Government  ordered  or 
even  recommended  either  performance.  Therefore  there  was  a  small  agitation 
got  up  against  vaccination,  and  Francis  Newman  consented  to  become  the 
president  of  one  of  its  meetings.  This  meeting  was  held  in  Exeter  Hall — not 
indeed  in  the  vast  hall  where  the  oratorios  are  performed,  and  whore  once 
upon  a  time  Henry  Ward  Beecher  pleaded  the  cause  of  the  Union ;  but  in  the 
"  lower  hall,"  as  it  is  called,  a  little  subterranean  den.  Some  qminent  classic 
person,  I  really  forget  who,  being  reproached  with  the  small  size  of  his  apart- 
ments, declared  that  he  should  be  only  too  glad  if  he  could  fill  his  rooms,  small 
as  they  were,  with  wen  his  friends.  The  organizers  of  this  meeting  might  have 
been  content  if  they  could  have  filled  the  hall,  small  as  it  was,  with  men  and 
women  their  friends.  The  attendance  was  not  nearly  up  to  the  size  of  the 
room.  There  on  the  platform  sat  the  good,  the  gifted,  and  the  fearless  Francis 
Newman;  and  immediately  around  him  were  some  dozen  embodied  and  living 
crotchets  and  crazes.  There  was  this  learned  physician  who  has  communica- 
tion with  the  spirit-world  regularly.  There  was  this  other  eminent  person 
who  has  long  been  trying  in  vain  to  teach  an  apathetic  Government  how  to 
cure  crime  on  phrenological  principles.  There  was  Smith,  who  is  opposed  to 
all  wars ;  Brown,  who  firmly  believes  that  every  disease  comes  from  the  use 
of  salt;  Jones,  who  has  at  his  own  expense  put  into  cimilation  thousands  of 
copies  of  his  work  against  the  employment  of  medical  men  in  puerperal  cases- 
Robinson,  who  is  ready  to  spend  his  last  coin  for  the  purpose  of  proving  that 


'TAR  NOBILE  FRATRUM— THE  TWO  NEWMANS."        173 

vaccination  and  original  sin  are  one  and  the  same  thing.  How  often,  oh,  how 
often  have  I  not  heard  those  theories  expounded!  How  often  have  I  marvelled 
at  the  extraordinary  perversion  of  ingenuity  by  which  figures,  facts,  philosophy, 
and  Scripture  are  jumbled  up  together  to  convince  you  that  the  moon  is  made 
of  green  cheese!  We  just  wanted  on  this  memorable  occasion  the  awful  per- 
sons who  prove  to  you  that  the  earth  is  flat,  and  the  indefatigable  ladies  who 
expound  their  claims  to  the  British  crown  feloniously  usurped  by  Queen  Vic- 
toria. There  sat  Francis  Newman  presiding  over  this  preposterous  little  con- 
clave, and  having  of  course  what  seemed  to  him  satisfactory  and  just  reasons 
for  the  position  he  occupied.  He  spoke  rather  better  than  usual,  and  there  was 
a  bewildering  bravery  of  paradox  writhing  through  his  speech  which  must 
have  delighted  his  listeners.  The  meeting  came  to  nothing.  The  papers  took 
hardly  any  notice  of  it  (London  papers  were  never  in  my  time  so  entirely 
conventional,  respectable,  and  Philistiuish  as  they  are  just  now) ;  and  New- 
man's effort  went  wholly  in  vain.  I  have  mentioned  it  only  because  it  was 
illustrative  or  typical  of  so  much  in  the  man's  whole  career.  So  much  of  lovely 
independence;  such  a  disdain  of  public  opinion  and  public  ridicule;  such  an 
absence  of  all  perception  of  the  ridiculous !  Thus  it  was  that  he  endeavored 
to  rouse  up  the  English  public,  who  except  for  the  extreme  democracy  always 
have  had  a  strong  hankering  for  the  Austrian  Government,  to  a  sense  of  the 
crimes  of  the  House  of  Hapsburg  against  its  subjects.  Thus  he  was  for  reform 
in  Parliament  when  Parliamentary  reform  was  a  theme  supposed  to  be  dead 
and  buried;  when  Palmcrston  had  trampled  on  its  ashes,  and  Disraeli  had 
made  merry  over  its  coffin.  Thus  he  came  out  for  tile  American  Union  when 
John  Bright  stood  almost  alone  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  Mill  and  Gold- 
win  Smith  and  two  or  three  others  were  trying  to  organize  public  opinion  out- 
side the  House.  The  same  qualities  after  all  which  made  Newman  nearly  sub- 
lime in  these  latter  instances,  were  just  those  which  made  him  well  nigh  ridic- 
ulous in  the  anti-vaccination  business.  But  in  all  the  instances  alike  the  same 
thing  can  be  said  of  Francis  Newman.  There  is  a  turn  or  twist  of  some  kind 
in  his  nature  and  intellect  which  always  seems  to  mar  his  l^est  efforts  at  practi- 
cal accomplishment.  Even  his  purely  literary  and  scholastic  productions  are 
marked  by  the  same  fatal  characteristic.  All  the  outfit,  all  the  materials  are 
there  in  surprising  profusion.  There  is  the  culture,  there  is  the  intellect,  the 
patience,  the  sincerity.  But  the  result  is  not  in  proportion  to  *Jie  value  of  the 
materials.  The  blending  is  not  complete,  is  not  effectual.  Something  has 
always  intervened  or  been  wanting.  Francis  Newman  has  never  done  and 
probably  never  will  do  anything  equal  to  his  strength  and  his  capacity. 

I  am  not  inviting  a  comparison  between  these  two  brothers,  so  alike  in  their 
sincerity,  their  devotion,  their  courage,  and  their  gifts — so  singularly  unlike, 
so  utterly  divided,  in  their  creeds  and  their  careers.  My  own  sympathies, 
of  course,  naturally  go  with  Francis  Newman,  who  has  in  a  vast  majority  of 
instances  been  a  teacher  of  some  opinion,  a  champion  of  some  political  cause 
of  which  I  am  proud  to  be  a  disciple  and  a  follower.  But  I  suppose  the  greater 
intellect  and  the  richer  gifts  were  those  which  were  given  up  so  meekly  and 
wholly  to  the  service  of  the  dogmatism  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  Tlw 
career  of  John  Henry  Newman  may  probably  be  regarded  as  having  practically 
clewed.  His  latest  work  of  note,  "  The  Grammar  of  Assent,"  does  not  indeed 
pt^om  to  show  any  falling  away  of  his  intellectual  powers;  but  I  have  heard 
that  his  physical  strength  has  suffered  severely  with  years,  and  he  never 
was  a  strong  man.  He  is  now  in  his  seventieth  year,  and  it  is  therefore  only 
reasonable  to  regard  him  as  one  who  has  done  his  work  and  whose  life  is  fullj 


174  "PAR  NOBILE  FRATRUM— THE  TWO  NEWMANS." 

open  to  the  judgment  of  his  time.  May  I  be  allowed  to  say  that  I  think  he  has 
done  some  good  even  to  that  English  Church  to  which  his  secession  struck  so 
heavy  a  blow?  Newman  was  really  the  mainspring  of  that  movement  which 
proposed  to  rescue  the  Church  from  apathy,  from  dull  easy-going  quiescence, 
from  the  perfunctory  discharge  of  formal  duties,  and  to  quicken  her  once  again 
with  the  spirit  of  a  priesthood,  to  arouse  her  to  the  living  work,  physical  and 
spiritual,  of  an  ecclesiastical  sovereignty.  The  impulse  indeed  overshot  itself 
in  his  case,  and  was  misdirected  in  the  case  of  Dr.  Pusey,  plunging  blindly 
into  Romanism  with  the  one,  degenerating  into  a  somewhat  barren  symbolism 
with  the  other.  But  throughout  the  English  Church  in  general  there  has  been 
surely  a  higher  spirit  at  work  since  that  famous  Oxford  movement  which  was 
inspired  by  John  Henry  Newman.  I  think  its  influence  has  been  more  active, 
more  beneficent,  more  human,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  more  spiritual,  since 
that  sudden  and  startling  impulse  was  given.  For  the  man  himself  little  more 
needs  to  be  said.  Every  one  acknowledges  his  gifts  and  his  virtues.  No  one 
doubts  that  in  his  marvellous  change  he  sought  only  the  pure  truth.  His  the- 
ology, I  presume,  is  not  that  of  the  readers  of  "The  Galaxy"  in  general,  any 
more  than  it  is  mine ;  but  I  trust  there  is  none  of  us  so  narrowed  to  his  own 
form  of  Christianity  as  to  refuse  his  respect  and  admiration  to  one  so  highly 
lifted  above  the  average  of  men  in  goodness  and  intellect,  even  though  his 
career  may  have  been  sacrificed  at  the  shrine  of  a  faith  that  is  not  ours.  For 
me,  I  am  sometimes  lost  in  wonder  at  the  sacrifice,  but  I  can  only  think  with 
respect  and  even  veneration  of  the  man. 

The  younger  brother  needs  no  apology  or  vindication,  in  the  United  States 
especially.  He  is,  be  it  understood,  a  thoroughly  religious  man.  He  has  never 
sunk  into  materialism  or  frittered  away  his  earnestness  in  mere  skepticism. 
He  is  not  orthodox — he  has  gone  his  own  way  as  regards  church  dogma  and 
discipline;  but  except  in  the  vulgarest  and  narrowest  application  of  the  word, 
he  is  no  "  infidel."  The  United  States  owe  him  some  good  feeling,  for  lie  was 
one  of  the  few  eminent  men  in  England  who  never  were  faithless  to  the  cause 
of  the  Union,  and  never  doubted  of  its  ultimate  triumph.  I  have  now  before 
me  one  of  the  most  powerful  arguments  addressed  to  an  English  audience  for 
the  Union  and  against  secession  that  reason,  justice,  and  eloquence  could  frame. 
It  is  a  pamphlet  published  in  1863  by  "  F.  W.  Newman,  late  Professor  at  Uni- 
versity College,  London,"  in  the  form  of  a  "  Letter  to  a  Friend  who  had  joined 
the  Southern  Independence  Association."  How  wonderful  it  seems  now  that 
such  arguments  ever  should  have  been  needed ;  how  few  there  were  then  in 
England  who  regarded  them ;  how  completely  time  has  justified  and  sealed 
them  as  true,  right,  and  prophetic.  I  read  the  pages  over,  and  all  the  old 
struggle  comes  back  with  its  rancors  and  its  dangers,  and  I  honor  anew  the 
brave  man  who  was  not  afraid  to  stand  as  one  of  a  little  group,  isolated,  de- 
nounced, and  laughed  at,  confiding  always  injustice  and  time. 

The  story  of  these  two  brothers  is  on  the  whole  as  strange  a  chapter  as  any 
I  know  in  the  biography  of  human  intellect  and  creed.  I  think  it  may  at  least 
teach  us  a  lesson  of  toleration,  if  nothing  better.  The  very  pride  of  intellect 
itself  can  hardly  pretend  to  look  down  with  mere  scorn  upon  beliefs  or  errors 
which  have  carried  off  in  contrary  directions  these  two  Newmans.  The  stern- 
est bigot  can  scarcely  refuse  to  admit  that  truthfulness  and  goodness  may  abide 
without  the  limits  of  his  own  creed,  when  he  remembers  the  high  and  noble 
example  of  pure,  true,  and  disinterested  lives  which  these  intellectually-sun- 
ilered  brothers  alike  have  given  to  their  fellow-men 


ARCHBISHOP  MANNING. 


ST.  JAMES'S  HALL,  London,  is  primarily  a  place  for  concerts  and  singers, 
as  Exeter  Hall  is.  But,  like  its  venerable  predecessor,  St.  James's  Hall 
Has  come  to  be  identified  with  political  meetings  of  a  certain  class.  Exeter 
Hall,  a  huge,  gaunt,  unadorned,  and  dreary  room  in  the  Strand,  is  resorted  to 
for  the  most  part  as  the  arena  and  platform  of  ultra-Protestantism.  St.  James's 
Hall,  a  beautiful  and  almost  lavishly  ornate  structure  in  Piccadilly,  is  com- 
monly used  by  the  leading  Roman  Catholics  of  London  when  they  desire  to 
make  a  demonstration.  There  are  political  classes  which  will  use  either  place 
indifferently ;  but  Exeter  Hall  has  usually  a  tinge  of  Protestant  exclusiveness 
about  its  political  expression,  while  the  ceiling  of  the  other  building  has  rung 
alike  to  the  thrilling  music  of  John  Bright's  voice,  to  the  strident  vehemence  of 
Mr.  Bradlaugh,  the  humdrum  humming  of  Mr.  Odger,  and  the  clear,  delicate, 
tremulous  intonations  of  Stuart  Mill.  But  I  never  heard  of  a  Roman  Catholic 
meeting  of  great  importance  being  held  anywhere  in  London  lately,  except  in 
St.  James's  Hall. 

Let  us  attend  such  a  meeting  there.  The  hall  is  a  huge  oblong,  with  gal- 
leries around  three  of  the  sides,  and  a  platform  bearing  a  splendid  organ  on  the 
fourth.  The  room  is  brilliantly  lighted,  and  the  mode  of  lighting  is  peculiar 
and  picturesque.  The  platform,  the  galleries,  the  body  of  the  hall  alike  are 
crowded.  This  is  a  meeting  held  to  make  a  demonstration  in  favor  of  some 
Roman  Catholic  demand — say  for  separate  education.  On  the  platform  are 
the  great  Catholic  peers,  most  of  them  men  of  lineage  stretching  back  to  years 
when  Catholicism  was  yet  unsuspicious  of  any  possible  rivalry  in  England. 
There  are  the  Norfolks,  the  Denbighs,  the  Dormers,  the  Petres,  the  Staf- 
fords ;  there  are  such  later  accessions  to  Catholicism  as  the  Marquis  of  Bute, 
whose  change  created  such  a  sensation,  and  Lord  Robert  Montagu,  who  "  went 
over  "  only  last  year.  There  are  some  recent  accessions  of  the  peerage  also — 
Lord  Acton,  for  instance,  head  of  a  distinguished  and  ancient  family,  but  only 
.utely  called  to  the  Upper  House,  and  who,  when  Sir  John  Acton,  won  honora- 
ble fame  as  a  writer  and  scholar.  Lord  Acton  not  many  years  ago  started  the 
"  Home  and  Foreign  Review,"  a  quarterly  periodical  which  endeavored  to 
reconcile  Catholicism  with  liberalism  and  science.  The  universal  opinion  of 
England  and  of  Europe  declared  the  "  Home  and  Foreign  Review  "  to  be  un- 
surpassed for  ability,  scholarship,  and  political  information  by  any  publication 


176  ARCHBISHOP  MANNING. 

in  the  world.  It  leaped  at  one  bound  to  a  level  with  the  "  Edinburgh,"  the 
"  Quarterly,"  and  the  "  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes."  But  the  Pope  thought  the 
Review  too  liberal,  and  intimated  that  it  ought  to  be  suppressed;  and  Lord 
Acton  meekly  bowed  his  head  and  suppressed  it  in  all  the  bloom  of  its  growing 
fame.  Some  Irish  members  of  Parliament  are  on  the  platform — men  of  sta- 
tion and  wealth  like  Munsell,  men  of  energy  and  brains  like  John  Francis  Ma- 
gnire ;  perhaps,  too,  the  handsome,  brilliant-minded  O'Donoghue,  with  his  pic- 
turesque pedigree  and  his  broken  fortunes.  But  in  general  there  is  not  a  very 
cordial  rapprochement  between  the  English  Catholic  peers  and  the  Irish  Catholic 
members.  Of  all  slow,  cold,  stately  Conservatives  in  the  world,  the  slowest, 
coldest,  and  stateliest  is  the  English  Catholic  peer.  Only  the  common  bond 
»f  religion  brings  these  two  sets  of  men  together  now  and  then.  They  meet, 
but  do  not  blend.  In  the  body  of  the  hall  are  the  middle-class  Catholics  of 
London,  the  shopkeepers  and  clerks,  mostly  Irish  or  of  Irish  parentage.  In 
the  galleries  are  swarming  the  genuine  Irishmen  of  London,  the  Paddies  who 
are  always  threatening  to  interrupt  Garibaldiau  gatherings  in  the  parks,  arid 
who  throw  up  their  hats  at  the  prospect  of  any  "  row  "  on  behalf  of  the  Pope. 
The  chair  is  taken  by  some  duke  or  earl,  who  is  listened  to  respectfully,  but  with- 
out any  special  fervor  of  admiration.  The  English  Catholics  are  undemonstra- 
tive in  any  case,  and  Irish  Paddy  does  not  care  much  about  a  chilly  English 
peer.  But  a  speaker  is  presently  introduced  who  has  only  to  make  his  appear- 
ance in  front  of  the  platform  in  order  to  awaken  one  universal  burst  of  applause. 
Paddy  and  the  Duke  of  Norfolk  vie  with  each  other ;  the  steady  English  shop- 
keeper from  Islington  is  as  demonstrative  as  any  O'Donoghue  or  Maguire. 
The  meeting  is  wide  awake  and  informed  by  one  spirit  and  soul  at  last. 

The  man  who  has  aroused  all  this  emotion  shrinks  back  almost  as  if  he  were 
afraid  of  it,  although  it  is  surely  not  new  to  him.  He  is  a  tall  thin  personage, 
some  sixty-two  years  of  age.  His  face  is  bloodless — pale  as  a  ghost,  one  might 
s;iy.  He  is  so  thin  as  to  look  almost  cadaverous.  The  outlines  of  the  face  are 
handsome  and  dignified.  There  is  much  of  courtly  grace  and  refinement  about 
the  bearing,  and  gestures  of  this  pale,  weak,  and  wasted  man.  He  wears  a 
long  robe  of  violet  silk,  with  some  kind  of  dark  cape  or  collar,  and  has  a  mas- 
sive gold  chain  round  his  neck,  holding  attached  to  it  a  great  gold  cross.  There 
is  a  cei'tain  nervous  quivering  about  his  eyes  and  lips,  but  otherwise  he  is  per- 
fectly collected  and  master  of  the  occasion.  His  voice  is  thin,  but  wonderfully 
clear  and  penetrating.  It  is  heard  all  through  this  great  hall — a  moment  ago 
so  noisy,  now  so  silent.  The  words  fall  with  a  slow,  quiet  force,  like  drops  of 
water.  Whatever  your  opinion  may  be,  yon  cannot  choose  but  listen ;  and,  in- 
deed, you  want  only  to  listen  and  see.  For  this  is  the  foremost  man  in  the 
Catholic  Church  of  England.  This  is  the  Cardinal  Grandison  of  Disraeli's 
"  Lothair " — Dr.  Henry  Edward  Manning,  Roman  Catholic  Archbishop  of 
Westminster,  successor  in  that  office  of  the  late  Cardinal  Wiseman. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  the  Irishmen  at  the  meeting  are  enthusiastic  about 
Archbishop  Manning.  An  Englishman  of  Englishmen,  with  no  drop  of  Irish 
blood  in  his  veins,  he  is  more  Hibernian  than  the  Hibernians  themselves  in  his 
sympathies  with  Ireland.  A  man  of  social  position,  of  old  family,  of  the  high- 
tst  education  and  the  most  refined  instincts,  he  woxild  leave  the  Catholic  noble- 
men at  any  time  to  go  down  to  his  Irish  teetotallers  at  the  East  End  of  Lon- 
don. He  firmly  believes  that  the  salvation  of  England  is  yet  to  be  accom- 
plished through  the  influence  of  that  religious  devotion  which  is  at  the  bottom 
of  the  Irish  nature,  and  which  some  of  us  call  superstition.  He  loves  his  own 


ARCHBISHOP  MANNING.  177 

country  dearly,  but  turns  away  from  her  present  condition  of  industrial  pros- 
perity to  the  days  before  the  Reformation,  when  yet  saints  trod  the  English  soil. 
"  In  England  there  has  been  no  saint  since  the  Reformation,"  he  said  the  other 
day,  in  sad,  sweet  tones,  to  one  of  wholly  different  opinions,  who  listened  with 
a  mingling  of  amazement  and  reverence.  No  views  that  I  have  ever  heard 
put  into  living  words  embodied  to  anything  like  the  same  extent  the  full 
chums  and  pretensions  of  Ultramontanism.  It  is  quite  wonderful  to  sit  and  lis- 
ten. One  cannot  but  be  impressed  by  the  sweetness,  the  thoughtful  ness,  the 
dignity,  I  had  almost  said  the  sanctity  of  the  man  who  thus  pours  forth,  with  a 
manner  full  of  the  most  tranquil  conviction,  opinions  which  proclaim  all  mod- 
ern progress  a  failure,  and  glorify  the  Roman  priest  or  the  Irish  peasant  as  the 
true  herald  and  repository  of  light,  liberty,  and  regeneration  to  a  sinking  and 
degraded  world, 

Years  ago,  Henry  Edward  Manning  was  one  of  the  brilliant  lights  of  the 
English  Protestant  Church.  Just  twenty  years  back  he  was  appointed  to  the 
high  place  of  Archdeacon  of  Chichester,  having  also,  according  to  the  manner 
in  which  the  English  State  Church  rewards  its  dignitaries,  more  than  one 
other  ecclesiastical  appointment  at  the  same  time.  Dr.  Manning  had  distin- 
guished himself  highly  during  his  career  at  the  University  of  Oxford.  His 
father  was  a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  Manning  on  starting  into 
life  had  many  friends  and  very  bright  prospects.  Nothing  would  have  been 
easier,  nothing  seemingly  would  have  been  more  natural  than  for  him  to  tread 
the  way  so  plainly  opened  before  him,  and  to  rise  to  higher  and  higher  dignity, 
xmtil  at  last  perhaps  the  princely  renown  of  a  bishopric  and  a  seat  in  the  House 
of  Lords  Avould  have  been  his  reward.  But  Dr.  Manning's  career  was  cast  in 
a  time  of  stress  and  trial  for  the  English  State  Church.  I  have  described 
briefly  in  a  former  article  the  origin,  growth,  and  effects  of  that  remarkable 
movement  which,  beginning  within  the  Church  itself  and  seeking  to  establish 
loftier  claims  for  her  than  she  had  long  put  forward,  ended  by  convulsing  her 
in  a  manner  more  troublous  than  any  religious  crisis  which  had  occurred  since 
the  Reformation.  Dr.  Manning's  is  evidently  a  nature  which  must  have  been 
specially  allured  by  what  I  may  be  allowed  to  call  the  supernatural  claims  put  for- 
ward on  behalf  of  the  Church  of  England.  He  was  of  course  correspondingly  dis- 
appointed by  what  he  considered  the  failure  of  those  claims.  As  Coleridge  says 
that  every  man  is  born  an  Aristotelian  or  a  Platonist,  so  it  may  perhaps  be  saU 
that  every  man  is  born  with  a  predisposition  to  lean  either  on  natural  or  super- 
natural laws  in  the  direct  guidance  of  life.  I  am  not  now  raising  any  religious 
question  whatever.  What  I  say  may  be  said  of  members  of  the  same  sect  or 
church — of  any  sect,  of  any  church.  One  man,  as  faithful  and  devout  a  be- 
liever as  any,  is  yet  content  to  go  through  his  daily  duties  and  fulfil  his  career 
trusting  to  his  religious  principles,  his  insight,  and  his  reason,  without  requiring 
at  every  moment  the  light  of  spiritual  or  supernatural  guidance.  Another 
must  always  have  his  world  in  direct  communion  with  the  spiritual,  or  it  is  no 
world  of  faith  to  him.  Now  it  is  impossible  to  look  in  Dr.  Manning's  face 
without  seeing  that  his  is  one  of  those  sensitive,  spiritual,  I  had  almost  said 
morbid  natures,  which  can  find  no  endurable  existence  without  a  close  and  con- 
stant communion  with  the  supernatural.  Keble,  Newman,  Time  and  the  Hour, 
called  out  for  the  assertion  of  the  claim  that  the  Church  of  England  was  the  true 
heir  of  the  apostolic  succession.  Such  a  nature  as  Manning's  must  have  delight- 
edly welcomed  the  claim.  But  the  mere  investigation  sent,  as  I  have  already 
explained,  one  Newman  to  Catholicism  and  the  other  to  Rationalism.  Dr.  Man- 


178  ARCHBISHOP  MANNING. 

liing,  too,  felt  compelled  to  ask  himself  whether  the  Church  could  make  good  its 
claim,  and  whether,  if  it  could  not,  he  had  any  longer  a  place  within  its  walls. 
The  change  does  not  appear  to  have  come  so  rapidly  to  fulfilment  with  him  as 
with  John  Henry  Newman.  Dr.  Manning  seems  to  me  to  have  a  less  aggressive 
temperament  than  his  distinguished  predecessor  in  secession.  There  is  more 
about  him  of  the  quietist,  of  the  ecstatic,  so  far  as  religious  thought  is  concerned, 
while  it  is  possible  that  he  may  be  a  more  practical  and  influential  guide  in  the 
mere  policy  of  the  church  to  which  he  belongs.  There  is  an  amount  of  scorn 
in  Newman's  nature  which  sometimes  reminds  one  of  Pascal,  and  which  I  have 
not  observed  in  Dr.  Manning  or  in  his  writings.  I  cannot  imagine  Dr.  Man- 
ning, for  example,  pelting  Charles  Kingsley  with  sarcasms  and  overwhelming 
him  with  contempt,  as  Dr.  Newman  evidently  delighted  to  do  in  the  famous 
controversy  which  was  provoked  by  the  apostle  of  Muscular  Christianity.  I 
suppose  therefore  that  Dr.  Manning  clung  for  a  long  time  to  the  faith  in  which 
he  was  bred.  But  his  whole  nature  is  evidently  cast  in  the  mould  which  makes 
Roman  Catholic  devotees.  He  is  a  man  of  the  type  which  perhaps  found  in 
Fenelon  its  most  illustrious  example.  I  think  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  to 
him  that  light  of  private  judgment  which  some  of  us  regard  as  man's  grand- 
est and  most  peculiarly  divine  attribute,  must  always  have  presented  itself  as 
something  abhorrent  to  his  nature.  I  am  judging,  of  course,  as  an  outsider 
and  as  one  little  acquainted  with  theological  subjects;  but  my  impression  of  the 
two  men  would  be  that  Dr.  Newman  joined  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in 
obedience  to  some  compulsion  of  reason,  acting  in  what  must  seem  to  most  of 
us  an  inscrutable  manner,  and  that  Dr.  Manning  never  would  have  been  a 
Protestant  at  all  if  he  had  not  believed  that  the  Protestant  Church  was  truly 
all  which  its  rival  claims  to  be. 

Dr.  Manning  in  fact  did  not  leave  the  Church.  The  Church  left  him.  He 
had  misunderstood  it.  It  became  revealed  at  last  as  it  really  is,  a  church 
founded  on  the  right  of  private  judgment,  and  Manning  was  appalled  and 
turned  away  from  it.  Something  that  may  almost  be  called  accident  brought 
home  to  his  mind  the  true  character  of  the  Church  to  which  he  belonged. 
Many  readers  of  "  The  Galaxy  "  may  have  some  recollection  of  the  once  cele- 
brated Gorham  case  in  England — a  case  which  I  shall  not  now  describe  any 
further  than  by  saying  that  it  raised  the  question  whether  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land can  prescribe  the  religion  of  the  State.  Had  the  Church  the  right  to  de- 
cide whether  cei-tain  doctrine  taught  by  one  of  its  clergy  was  heretical,  and  to 
condemn  it  if  so  declared?  In  England,  Church  and  State  are  so  bound  up  to- 
gether, that  it  is  practically  the  State  and  not  the  Church  which  decides  whether 
this  or  that  teaching  is  heresy  or  true  religion.  A  lord  chancellor  who  may 
be  an  infidel,  and  two  or  three  "law  lords"  who  may  be  anything  or  nothing, 
settle  the  question  in  the  end.  We  all  remember  the  epigram  about  Lord 
Chancellor  Westbury,  the  least  godly  of  men,  having  "  dismissed  Hell  with 
costs,"  and  taken  away  from  the  English  Protestant  "  his  last  hope  of  damna- 
tion." The  Gorham  case,  twenty  years  ago,  showed  that  the  Church,  as 
an  ecclesiastical  body,  had  no  power  to  condemn  heresy.  This,  to  men  like 
Stuart  Mill,  appears  on  the  whole  a  satisfactory  condition  of  things  so  long  as 
there  is  a  State  Church,  for  the  plain  reason  which  he  gives — namely,  that  the 
State  in  England  is  now  far  more  liberal  than  the  Church.  But  to  Dr.  Man- 
ning the  idea  of  the  Church  thus  abdicating  its  function  of  interpreting  and  de- 
claring doctrine  was  equivalent  to  the  renunciation  of  its  right  to  existence. 
lie  strove  hard  to  bring  about  an  organized  and  solemn  declaration  and  pro- 


ARCHBISHOP  MANNING.  179 

test  from  the  Church — a  declaration  of  doctrine,  a  protest  against  secular  con- 
trol. He  became  the  leader  of  an  effort  in  this  direction.  The  effort  met 
with  little  support.  The  then  Bishop  of  London  did  indeed  introduce  a  bill  into 
the  House  of  Lords  for  the  purpose  of  enacting  that  in  matters  of  doctrine,  as 
distinct  from  questions  of  mere  law,  the  final  decision  should  rest  with  the  pre- 
lates. Dr.  Manning  sat  in  the  gallery  of  the  House  of  Lords  on  that  memo- 
rable night.  The  Bishop  of  London  wholly  failed.  The  House  of  Lords  scouted 
the  idea  of  liberal  England  tolerating  a  sort  of  ecclesiastical  inquisition.  Every 
one  admitted  the  anomalous  condition  in  which  things  then  were  placed ;  but 
few  indeed  would  think  of  enacting  a  dogma  of  infallibility  in  favor  of  the 
bishops  of  the  Church.  Lord  Brougham  spoke  against  the  bill  with  what  Dr. 
Manning  himself  admits  to  be  plain  English  common  sense.  He  said  the 
House  of  Lords  through  its  law  peers  could  decide  questions  of  mere  ecclesias- 
tical law,  and  the  decisions  would  carry  weight  and  authority;  but  neither 
peers  nor  bishops  could  in  England  decide  a  question  of  doctrine.  Suppose,  he 
asked,  the  bishops  were  divided  equally  on  such  a  question,  where  would  the 
decision  be  then  ?  Suppose  there  was  a  very  small  majority,  who  would  ac- 
cept such  a  decision  ?  Or  even  suppose  there  was  a  large  majority,  but  that 
the  minority  comprised  the  few  men  of  greatest  knowledge,  ability,  and  au- 
thority, what  value  would  attach  to  the  judgment  of  such  a  majority?  The  bill 
was  a  hopeless  failure.  Dr.  Manning  has  himself  described  with  equal  candor  and 
clearness  the  effect  which  the  debate  had  upon  him.  He  mentally  supplemented 
Lord  Brougham's  questions  by  one  other.  Suppose  that  all  the  bishops  of  the 
Church  of  England  should  decide  unanimously  on  any  doctrine,  would  any  one 
receive  the  decision  as  infallible?  He  was  compelled  to  answer,  "No  one." 
The  Church  of  England  had  no  pretension  to  be  the  infallible  spiritual  guide  of 
men.  Were  she  to  raise  any  such  pretension,  it  would  be  rejected  with  con- 
tempt by  the  common  mind  of  the  nation.  Hear  then  how  this  conviction  af- 
fected the  man  who  up  to  that  time  had  had  no  thought  but  for  the  interests 
and  duties  of  the  English  Church.  "To  those,"  he  has  himself  told  us,  "who 
believed  that  God  has  established  upon  the  earth  a  divine  and  therefore  an  un- 
erring guardian  and  teacher  of  his  faith,  this  event  demonstrated  that  the 
Church  of  England  could  not  be  that  guardian  and  teacher." 

While  Dr.  Manning  was  still  uncertain  whither  to  turn,  the  celebrated 
"  Papal  aggression  "  took  place.  Cardinal  Wiseman  was  sent  to  England  by 
the  Pope,  with  the  title  of  Archbishop  of  Westminster.  All  England  raged. 
Earl  Russell  wrote  his  famous  "  Durham  Letter."  The  Lord  Chancellor  Camp- 
bell, at  a  public  dinner  in  the  city  of  London,  called  up  a  storm  of  enthusiasm 
by  quoting  the  line  from  Shakespeare,  which  declares  that 

Under  our  feet  we'll  stamp  the  cardinal's  hat. 

Protestant  zealots  in  Stockport  belabored  the  Roman  Catholics  and  sacked  their 
houses ;  Irish  laborers  in  Birkenhead  retorted  upon  the  Protestants.  The  Gov- 
ernment brought  in  the  Ecclesiastical  Titles  Bill — a  measure  making  it  penal 
for  any  Catholic  prelate  to  call  himself  archbishop  or  bishop  of  any  place  in 
England.  Let  him  be  "Archbishop  Wiseman  "  or  "  Cardinal  Wiseman,  Arch- 
bishop of  Mesopotamia,"  as  long  as  he  liked — but  not  Archbishop  of  Westmin- 
ster or  Tuam.  The  bill  was  powerfully,  splendidly  opposed  by  Gladstone, 
Bright,  and  Cobden,  on  the  broad  ground  that  it  invaded  the  precincts  of  re- 
ligious liberty ;  but  it  was  earned  and  made  law.  There  it  remained.  There 
never  was  the  slightest  attempt  made  to  enforce  it.  The  Catholic  prelates  held 


180  ARCIIBISIIOr  MANNING. 

to  the  titles  the  Pope  had  given  them ;  and  no  English  court,  judge,  magistrate. 
or  policeman  ever  offered  to  prevent  or  punish  them.  So  ludicrous,  so  barren 
a  proceeding  as  the  carrying  of  that  measure  has  not  been  known  in  the  Eng- 
land of  our  time. 

Cardinal  Wiseman  was  an  able  and  a  discreet  man.  He  was  calm,  plausi- 
ble, powerful.  He  was  very  earnest  in  the  cause  of  his  Church,  but  he  seemed 
much  more  like  a  man  of  the  world  than  Newman  or  Dr.  Manning.  There 
was  little  of  the  loftily  spiritual  in  his  manner  or  appearance.  His  bulky 
person  and  swollen  face  suggested  at  the  first  glance  a  sort  of  Abbot  Boni- 
face ;  he  was,  I  believe,  in  reality  an  ascetic.  The  corpulence  which  seemed 
the  result  of  good  living  was  only  the  effect  of  ill  health.  He  had  a  persuasive 
and  an  imposing  way.  His  ability  was  singularly  flexible.  His  eloquence  was 
often  too  gorgeous  and  ornamental  for  a  pure  taste,  but  when  the  occasion 
needed  he  could  address  an  audience  in  language  of  the  simplest  and  most 
practical  common  sense.  The  same  adaptability,  if  I  may  use  such  a  word,  was 
evident  in  all  he  did.  He  would  talk  with  a  cabinet  minister  on  terms  of  calm 
equality,  as  if  his  rank  must  be  self-evident,  and  he  delighted  to  set  a  band  of 
poor  school  children  playing  around  him.  He  was  a  cosmopolitan — English 
and  Irish  by  extraction,  Spanish  by  birth,  Roman  by  education.  When  he  spoke 
English  he  was  exactly  like  what  a  portly,  dignified  British  bishop  ought  to  be 
— a  John  Bull  in  every  respect.  When  he  spoke  Italian  at  Rome  he  fell  in- 
stinctively and  at  once  into  all  the  peculiarities  of  intonation  and  gesture  which 
distinguish  the  people  of  Italy  from  all  other  races.  When  he  conversed  in 
Spanish  he  subsided  into  the  grave,  somewhat  saturnine  dignity  and  repose  of 
the  true  Castilian.  All  this,  I  presume,  was  but  the  natural  effect  of  that  flexi- 
bility of  temperament  I  have  attempted  to  describe.  I  had  but  slight  personal 
acquaintance  with  Cardinal  Wiseman,  and  I  paint  him  only  as  he  impressed 
me,  a  casual  observer.  I  am  satisfied  that  he  was  a  profoundly  earnest  and 
single-minded  man;  the  testimony  of  many  whom  I  know  and  who  knew  him 
well  compels  me  to  that  conviction.  But  such  was  not  the  impression  he 
would  have  left  on  a  mere  acquaintance.  He  seemed  rather  one  who  could,  for 
a  purpose  which  he  believed  great,  be  all  things  to  all  men.  He  impressed  me 
quite  differently  from  the  manner  in  which  I  have  been  impressed  by  John 
Henry  Newman  and  by  Archbishop  Manning.  He  reminded  one  of  some 
great,  capable,  worldly-wise,  astute  Prince  of  the  Church  of  other  generations, 
politician  rather  than  priest,  more  ready  to  sustain  and  skilled  to  defend  the 
temporal  power  of  the  Papacy  than  to  illustrate  its  highest  spiritual  influence. 

The  events  which  brought  Cardinal  Wiseman  to  England  had  naturally  a 
powerful  effect  upon  the  mind  of  Dr.  Mr-inning.  It  was  the  renewed  claim 
of  the  Roman  Church  to  enfold  England  in  its  spiritual  jurisdiction.  For  Dr. 
Manning,  who  had  just  seen  what  he  regarded  as  the  voluntary  abdication  of 
the  English  Church,  the  claim  would  in  any  case  have  probably  been  decisive. 
It  "  stepped  between  him  and  his  fighting  soul."  But  the  personal  influence 
of  Cardinal  Wiseman  had  likewise  an  immense  weight  and  force.  Dr.  Man- 
ning ever  since  that  time  entertained  a  feeling  of  the  profoundest  devotion  and 
reverence  for  Cardinal  Wiseman.  >  The  change  was  consummated  in  1851, 
and  one  of  the  first  practical  comments  upon  the  value  of  the  Ecclesiastical 
Titles  Act  was  the  announcement  that  a  scholar  and  divine  of  whom  the  Pro- 
testant Church  had  long  been  especially  proud  had  resigned  his  preferments, 
his  dignities,  and  his  prospects,  and  passed  over  to  the  Church  of  Rome.  I 
jannot  better  illustrate  the  effect  produced  on  the  public  mind  than  by  saying 


ARCHBISHOP  MANNING.  181 

that  even  the  secession  of  John  Henry  Newman  hardly  made  a  deeper  im- 
pression. 

Dr.  Manning,  of  course,  rose  to  high  rank  in  the  church  of  his  adoption. 
He  became  Roman  of  the  Romans — Ultramontane  of  the  Ultramontanes.  On 
the  death  of  his  friend  and  leader,  Cardinal  Wiseman,  whose  funeral  sermon 
he  preached,  Henry  Manning  became  Archbishop  of  Westminster.  Except  for 
his  frequent  journeys  to  Rome,  he  has  always  since  his  appointment  lived  in 
London.  Although  a  good  deal  of  an  ascetic,  as  his  emaciated  face  and  figure 
would  testify,  he  is  nothing  of  a  hermit.  He  mingles  to  a  certain  extent  in  so- 
ciety, he  takes  part  in  many  public  movements,  and  he  has  doubtless  given  Mr. 
Disraeli  ample  opportunity  of  studying  his  manner  and  bearing.  I  don't  be- 
lieve Mr.  Disraeli  capable  of  understanding  the  profound  devotion  and  single- 
minded  sincerity  of  the  man.  A  moi'e  singular,  striking,  marvellous  figure 
does  not  stand  out,  I  think,  in  our  English  society.  Everything  that  an  ordi- 
nary Englishman  or  American  would  regard  as  admirable  and  auspicious  in 
the  progress  of  our  civilization,  Dr.  Manning  calmly  looks  upon  as  lamentable 
and  evil-omened.  What  we  call  progress  is  to  his  mind  decay.  What  we  call 
light  is  to  him  darkness.  What  we  reverence  as  individual  liberty  he  deplores 
as  spiritual  slavery.  The  mere  fact  that  a  man  gives  reasons  for  his  faith 
seems  shocking  to  this  strangely-gifted  apostle  of  unconditional  belief.  Though 
you  were  to  accept  on  bended  knees  ninety-nine  of  the  decrees  of  Rome,  yon 
would  still  be  in  his  mind  a  heretic  if  you  paused  to  consider  as  to  the  accept- 
ance of  the  hundredth  dogma.  All  the  peculiarly  modern  changes  in  the  legis- 
lation of  England,  the  admission  of  Jews  to  Parliament,  the  introduction  of  the 
principle  of  divorce,  the  practical  recognition  of  the  English  divine's  right  of 
private  judgment,  are  painful  and  odious  to  him.  I  have  never  heard  from 
any  other  source  anything  so  clear,  complete,  and  astonishing  as  his  cordial 
acceptance  of  the  uttermost  claims  of  Rome ;  the  prostration  of  all  reason  and 
judgment  before  the  supposed  supernatural  attributes  of  the  Papal  throne.  In 
one  of  the  finest  passages  of  his  own  writings  he  says :  "  My  love  for  England 
begins  with  the  England  of  St.  Bede.  Saxon  England,  with  all  its  tumults, 
seems  to  me  saintly  and  beautiful.  Norman  England  I  have  always  loved  less, 
because,  although  majestic,  it  became  continually  less  Catholic,  until  the  evil 
spirit  of  the  world  broke  off  the  light  yoke  of  faith  at  the  so-called  Reforma- 
tion. Still  I  loved  the  Christian  England  which  survived,  and  all  the  lingering 
outlines  of  diocese  aSd  parishes,  cathedrals  and  churches,  with  the  names  of 
paints  upon  them.  It  is  this  vision  of  the  past  which  still  hovers  over  England 
and  makes  it  beautiful  and  full  of  the  memories  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  Nay, 
I  loved  the  parish  church  of  my  childhood  and  the  college  chapel  of  my  youtlr, 
and  the  little  church  under  a  green  hillside  where  the  morning  and  evening 
prayers  and  the  music  of  the  English  Bible  for  seventeen  years  became  a  part 
of  my  soul.  Nothing  is  more  beautiful  in  the  natural  order,  and  if  there  were 
no  eternal  world  I  could  have  made  it  my  home."  To  Dr.  Manning  the  time 
when  saints  walked  the  earth  of  England  is  more  of  a  reality  than  the  day  be- 
fore yesterday  to  most  of  us.  Where  the  ordinary  eye  sees  only  a  poor,  igno- 
rant Irish  peasant,  Dr.  Manning  discerns  a  heaven-commissioned  bearer  of 
light  and  truth,  destined  by  the  power  of  his  unquestioning  faith  to  redeem 
perhaps,  in  the  end,  even  English  philosophers  and  statesmen.  When  it  was 
said  in  the  praise  of  the  murdered  Archbishop  of  Paris  that  he  was  disposed  to 
regret  the  introduction  of  the  dogma  of  infallibility,  Archbishop  Manning  came 
eagerly  to  the  rescue  of  his  friend's  memory,  and  as  one  would  vindicate  a  per- 


182  ARCHBISHOP  MANNING. 

eon  unjustly  accused  of  crime,  he  vindicated  the  dead  Archbishop  from  the 
stigma  of  having  for  a  moment  dared  to  have  an  opinion  of  his  own  on  such  a 
subject.  Of  course,  if  Dr.  Manning  were  an  ordinary  theological  devotee  or  fa- 
natic, there  would  be  nothing  remarkable  in  all  this.  But  he  is  a  man  of  the 
widest  culture,  of  high  intellectual  gifts,  of  keen  and  penetrating  judgment  in 
all  ordinary  affairs,  remarkable  for  his  close  and  logical  argument,  his  persua- 
sive reasoning,  and  for  a  genial,  quiet  kind  of  humor  which  seems  especially 
calculated  to  dissolve  sophistry  by  its  action.  He  is  an  English  gentleman,  a 
man  of  the  world;  he  was  educated  at  Oxford  with  Arthur  Pendennis  and 
young  Lord  Magnus  Charters ;  he  lives  at  York  Place  in  the  London  of  to-day ; 
he  drives  down  to  the  House  of  Commons  and  talks  politics  in  the  lobby  with 
Gladstone  and  Lowe ;  he  meets  Disraeli  at  dinner  parties,  and  is  on  friendly 
terms,  I  dare  say,  with  Huxley  and  Herbert  Spencer ;  he  reads  the  newspapers, 
and  I  make  no  doubt  is  now  well  acquainted  with  the  history  of  the  agitation 
against  Tammany  and  Boss  Tweed.  I  think  such  a  man  is  a  marvellous  phe- 
nomenon in  our  age.  It  is  as  if  one  of  the  mediaeval  saints  from  the  stained 
windows  of  a  church  should  suddenly  become  infused  with  life  and  take  a  part 
in  all  the  ways  of  our  present  world,  I  can  understand  the  long-abiding  power 
of  the  Catholic  Church  when  I  remember  that  I  have  heard  and  seen  and  talked 
with  Henry  Edward  Manning. 

Dr.  Manning  is  not,  I  fancy,  very  much  of  a  political  reformer.  His  incli- 
nations would  probably  be  rather  conservative  than  otherwise.  He  is  drawn 
toward  Gladstone  and  the  Liberal  party  less  by  distinct  political  affinity,  of 
which  there  is  but  little,  than  by  his  hope  and  belief  that  through  Gladstone 
something  will  be  done  for  that  Ireland  which  to  this  Oxford  scholar  is  still  the 
"  island  of  the  saints."  The  Catholic  members  of  Parliament,  whether  English 
or  Irish,  consult  Archbishop  Manning  constantly  upon  all  questions  connected 
with  education  or  religion.  His  parlor  in  York  Place — not  far  from  Adhere 
Mine.  Tussaud's  wax- work  exhibition  attracts  the  country  visitor — is  the  fre- 
quent scene  of  conferences  which  have  their  influence  upon  the  action  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  He  is  a  devoted  upholder  of  the  doctrine  of  total  absti- 
nence from  intoxicating  drinks ;  and  he  is  the  only  Englishman  of  real  influence 
and  ability,  except  Francis  Newman,  who  is  in  favor  of  prohibitory  legislation. 
He  is  the  medium  of  communication  between  Rome  and  England;  the  living 
link  of  connection  between  the  English  Catholic  peer  and  the  Irish  Catholic 
bricklayer.  The  position  which  he  occupies  is  at  all  events  quite  distinctive. 
There  is  nobody  else  in  England  who  could  set  up  the  faintest  claim  to  any  such 
place.  It  would  be  superfluous  to  remark  that  I  do  not  expect  the  readers  of 
"  The  Galaxy  "  to  have  any  sympathy  with  the  opinions,  theological  or  political, 
ef  such  a  man.  But  the  man  himself  is  worthy  of  profound  interest,  of  study, 
and  even  of  admiration.  He  is  the  spirit,  the  soul,  the  ideal  of  mediaeval  faith 
embodied  in  the  form  of  a  living  English  scholar  and  gentleman.  He  repre- 
sents and  illustrates  a  movement  the  most  remarkable,  possibly  the  most  por- 
tenUnis,  which  has  disturbed  England  and  the  English  Church  since  the  time 
of  Wyckliffe.  No  one  can  have  any  real  knowledge  of  the  influences  at  work 
in  English  life  to-day,  no  one  can  understand  the  history  of  the  past  twenty 
years,  or  even  pretend  to  conjecture  as  to  the  possibilities  of  the  future,  who 
has  not  paid  some  attention  to  the  movement  which  has  Dr.  Manning  for  one 
of  its  most  distinguished  leaders,  and  to  the  position  and  character  of  Manning 
himself. 


JOHN  RUSKIN. 

ANY  one  who  has  visited  the  National  Gallery  in  London  must  have  seen? 
and  seeing  must  have  studied,  the  contrasted  paintings  placed  side  by 
side  of  Turner  and  of  Claude.  They  will  attract  attention  if  only  because  the 
two  Turners  are  thus  placed  apart  from  the  rooms  used  as  a  Turner  Gallery,  and 
containing  the  great  collection  of  the  master's  works.  The  pictures  of  which  I 
am  now  speaking  are  hung  in  a  room  principally  occupied  by  the  paintings  of 
Murillo.  As  you  enter  you  are  at  once  attracted  by  four  large  pictures  which 
hang  on  either  side  of  the  door  opposite.  On  the  right  are  Turner's  "  Dido 
Building  Carthage,"  and  Claude's  "  Embarkation  of  the  Queen  of  Sheba."  On 
the  left  are  a  "  Landscape  with  the  Sun  Rising  "  by  Turner,  and  "  The  Mar- 
riage of  Isaac  and  Rebecca  "  by  Claude.  Nobody  could  fail  to  observe  that  the 
pictures  are  thus  arranged  for  some  distinct  purpose.  They  are  in  fact  placed 
side  by  side  for  the  sake  of  comparison  and  contrast.  They  are  all  eminently 
characteristic ;  they  have  the  peculiar  faults  and  the  peculiar  merits  of  the  art- 
ists. In  the  Claudes  we  have  even  one  of  those  yellow  trunks  which  are  the 
abomination  of  the  critic  I  am  about  to  speak  of,  and  one  might  almost  suppose 
that  the  Queen  of  Sheba  was  embarking  for  Saratoga.  I  do  not  propose  to 
criticise  the  pictures ;  but  in  them  you  have,  to  the  full,  Turner  and  Claude. 

Now  in  the  contrast  between  these  pictures  may  be  found,  symbolically  at 
least,  the  origin  and  motive  of  John  Ruskin's  career.  He  sprang  into  literary 
life  simply  as  a  vindicator  of  the  fame  and  genius  of  Turner.  But  as  he  went 
on  with  his  task  he  found,  or  at  least  he  convinced  himself,  that  the  vindication 
of  the  great  painter  was  essentially  a  vindication  of  all  true  art.  Still  further 
proceeding  with  his  self-imposed  task,  he  persuaded  himself  that  the  cause  of 
true  art  was  identical  with  the  cause  of  truth,  and  that  truth,  from  Ruskin's 
point  of  view,  enclosed  in  the  same  rules  and  principles  all  the  morals,  all  the 
politics,  all  the  science,  industry,  and  daily  business  of  life.  Therefore  from  an 
art-critic  he  became  a  moralist,  a  political  economist,  a  philosopher,  a  states- 
man, a  preacher — anything,  everything  that  human  intelligence  can  impel  a 
man  to  be.  All  that  he  has  written  since  his  first  appeal  to  the  public  has  been 
inspired  by  this  conviction — that  an  appreciation  of  the  truth  in  art  reveals  to 
him  who  has  it  the  truth  in  everything.  This  belief  has  been  the  source  of  Mr. 
Ruskin's  greatest  successes  and  of  his  most  complete  and  ludicrous  failures. 
It  has  made  him  the  admiration  of  the  world  one  week,  and  the  object  of  its 
placid  pity  or  broad  laughter  the  next.  A  being  who  could  be  Joan  of  Arc  to- 
day and  Voltaire's  Pucelle  to-morrow  would  hardly  exhibit  a  stronger  psychi- 
cal paradox  than  the  eccentric  genius  of  Mr.  Ruskin  commonly  displays.  But 
in  order  to  understand  him,  or  to  do  him  common  justice — in  order  not  to  re- 
gard him  as  a  mere  erratic  utterer  of  eloquent'contradictions,  poured  out  on  the 
impulse  of  each  moment's  new  freak  of  fancy — we  must  always  bear  in  mind 
this  fundamental  faith  of  the  man.  Extravagant  as  this  or  that  doctrine  may 
be,  outrageous  as  to-day's  contradiction  of  yesterday's  assertion  may  be,  yet 
the  whole  career  is  consistent  with  its  essential  principles  and  belief. 

Ruskin  was  singularly  fitted  by  fortune  to  live  for  a  purpose ;  to  consecrate 
his  life  to  the  cause  of  art  and  of  what  he  considered  truth.  As  everybody  knows, 
he  was  born  to  wealth  so  considerable  as  to  allow  him  to  indulge  all  his  tastes  and 
whims,  and  to  write  without  any  regard  for  money  profit.  I  hardly  know  of 


184  JOHN  RUSKIN. 

any  other  author  of  eminence  who  in  our  time  has  worked  with  so  complete  an 
independence  of  publisher,  public,  or  paymaster.  I  do  not  suppose  lluskin  evtii 
wrote  one  line  for  money.  Some  of  his  works  must  have  brought  him  in  a 
good  return  of  mere  pounds  and  shillings;  but  they  would  have  been  written 
just  the  same  if  they  had  never  paid  for  printing;  and  indeed  the  author  is  al- 
ways spending  money  on  some  benevolent  crotchet.  He  was  born  in  London, 
and  he  himself  attributes  much  of  his  early  love  for  nature  to  the  fact  that  he 
was  "accustomed  for  two  or  three  years  to  no  other  prospect  than  that  of  the 
brick  walls  over  the  way,"  and  that  he  had  "  no  brothers  nor  sisters  nor  com- 
panions." I  question  whether  anybody  not  acquainted  with  London  can  un- 
derstand how  completely  one  can  be  shut  in  from  the  pure  face  of  free  nature 
in  that  vast  city.  In  New  York  one  can  hardly  walk  far  in  any  direction  without 
catching  glimpses  of  the  water  and  the  shores  of  New  Jersey  or  Long  Island. 
But  in  some  of  the  most  respectable  middle-class  regions  of  London,  you  might 
drudge  away  or  dream  away  your  life  and  never  have  one  sight  of  open  nature 
unless  you  made  a  regular  expedition  to  find  her.  Ruskin  speaks  somewhere 
of  the  strange  and  exquisite  delight  which  the  cockney  feels  when  he  treads  on 
grass ;  and  every  biographical  sketch  of  him  recalls  that  passage  in  his  writings 
which  tells  us  of  the  first  thing  he  could  remember  as  an  event  in  his  life — his 
being  taken  by  his  nurse  to  the  brow  of  one  of  the  crags  overlooking  Derwent- 
water,  and  the  "  intense  joy,  mingled  with  awe,  that  I  had  in  looking  through 
the  hollows  in  the  mossy  roots  over  the  crag  into  the  dark  lake,  and  which  has 
associated  itself  more  or  less  with  all  twining  roots  of  trees  ever  since."  Rus- 
kin travelled  much,  and  at  a  very  early  age,  through  Europe.  He  became  fa- 
miliar with  most  of  the  beautiful  show-places  of  the  European  Continent  when 
a  boy,  and  I  believe  he  never  extended  the  sphere  of  his  travels.  About  his 
early  life  there  is  little  to  be  said.  He  completed  his  education  at  Oxford,  and, 
more  successful  than  Arthur  Pendennis,  he  went  in  for  a  prize  poem  and  won 
the  prize.  He  visited  the  Continent,  more  especially  Switzerland  and  Italy, 
again  and  again.  He  married  a  Scottish  lady,  and  the  marriage  was  not  a 
happy  one.  I  don't  propose  to  go  into  any  of  the  scandal  and  talk  which  the 
events  created;  but  I  may  say  that  the  marriage  was  dissolved  without  any 
moral  blame  resting  on  or  even  imputed  to  either  of  the  parties,  and  that  the 
lady  afterwards  became  the  wife  of  Mr.  Millais.  Since  then  Mr.  Ruskin  has  led  a 
secluded  rather  than  a  lonely  life.  His  constitution  is  feeble ;  he  has  as  little 
robustness  of  physique  as  can  well  be  conceived,  and  no  kind  of  excitement  is 
suitable  for  him.  Only  the  other  day  he  sank  into  a  condition  of  such  exhaus- 
tion that  for  a  while  it  was  believed  impossible  he  could  recover.  At  one  time 
he  used  to  appear  in  public  rather  often;  and  was  ready  to  deliver  lectures  on 
the  ethics  of  art  wherever  he  thought  his  teaching  could  benefit  the  ignorant 
or  the  poor.  He  was  especially  ready  to  address  assemblages  of  workingmen, 
the  pupils  of  charitable  institutions  for  the  teaching  of  drawing.  I  cannot  re- 
member his  ever  having  taken  part  in  any  fashionable  pageant  or  demonstra- 
tion of  any  kind.  Of  late  he  has  ceased  to  show  himself  at  any  manner  of  pub- 
lic meeting,  and  he  addresses  his  favorite  workingmen  through  the  medium 
of  an  irregular  little  publication,  a  sort  of  periodical  or  tract  which  he  calls 
"  Fors  Clavigera."  Of  this  publication  "  I  send  a  copy,"  he  announces,  "  to 
each  of  the  principal  journals  and  periodicals,  to  be  noticed  or  not  at  their  pleas- 
ure; otherwise,  I  shall  use  no  advertisements."  The  author  also  informs  us 
that  "  the  tracts  will  be  sold  for  sevenpence  each,  without  abatement  on  quan- 
tity." I  doubt  whether  many  sales  have  taken  place,  or  whether  the  reference 


JOHN  RUSKIN.  185 

to  purchase  in  quantity  was  at  all  necessary,  or  whether  indeed  the  author 
cared  one  way  or  the  other.  In  one  of  these  printed  letters  he  says :  "  The 
scientific  men  are  busy  as  ants,  examining  the  sun  and  the  moon  and  the  seven 
stars ;  and  can  tell  nae  all  about  them,  I  believe,  by  this  time,  and  how  they 
move  and  what  they  are  made  of.  And  I  do  not  care,  for  my  part,  two  copper 
spangles  how  they  move  nor  what  they  are  made  of.  I  can't  move  them  any 
other  way  than  they  go,  nor  make  them  of  anything  else  better  than  they  are 
made."  This  might  sound  wonderfully  sharp  and  practical,  if,  a  few  pages  on, 
Mr.  Raskin  did  not  broach  his  proposition  for  the  founding  of  a  little  model 
colony  of  labor  in  England,  where  boys  and  girls  alike  are  to  be  taught  agricul- 
ture, vocal  music,  Latin,  and  the  history  of  five  cities — Athens,  Rome,  Venice, 
Florence,  and  London.  This  scheme  was  broached  last  August,  and  it  is 
rather  soon  yet  even  to  ask  whether  any  steps  have  been  taken  to  put  it  into 
execution;  but  Mr.  Ruskin  has  already  given  five  thousand  dollars  to  begin 
with,  and  will  probably  give  a  good  deal  more  before  he  acknowledges  the  in- 
evitable failure.  Ruskiu  lives  in  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  London  suburbs, 
on  Denmark  Hill,  at  the  south  side  of  the  river,  near  Dulwich  and  the  exquisite 
Sydenham  slopes  where  the  Crystal  Palace  stands.  Here  he  indulges  his  love 
of  pictures  and  statues,  and  of  rest — when  he  is  not  in  the  mood  for  unrest — and 
nourishes  philanthropic  schemes  of  eccentric  kinds,  and  is  altogether  about 
the  nearest  approach  to  an  independent,  self-sufficing  philosopher  our  modern 
days  have  known.  Of  his  life  as  a  private  citizen  this  much  is  about  all  that  it 
concerns  us  to  hear. 

Twenty-eight  years  have  passed  away  since  Mr.  Ruskin  leaped  into  the 
critical  arena,  with  a  spring  as  bold  and  startling  as  that  of  Ed\vard  Kean  on 
the  Kemble-haunted  stage.  The  little  volume,  so  modest  in  its  appearance,  so 
self-sufficient  in  its  tone,  which  the  author  defiantly  flung  down  like  a  gage  of 
battle  before  the  world,  was  entitled  "Modern  Painters  :  their  Superiority  in 
the  Art  of  Landscape  Painting  to  all  the  Ancient  Masters.  By  a  Graduate  of 
Oxford."  I  was  a  boy  of  thirteen,  living  in  a  small  provincial  town,  when  this 
book  made  its  first  appearance,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  the  echo  of  the  sensa- 
tion it  created  still  rings  in  my  ears.  It  was  a  challenge  to  all  established  be- 
liefs and  prejudices;  and  the  challenge  was  delivered  in  the  tones  of  one  who 
felt  confident  that  he  could  make  good  his  words  against  any  and  all  oppo- 
nents. If  there  was  one  thing  that  more  than  another  seemed  to  have  been 
fixed  and  rooted  in  the  English  mind,  it  was  that  Claude  and  one  or  two  other 
of  the  old  masters  possessed  the  secret  of  landscape  painting.  When,  there- 
fore, this  bold  young  dogmatist  involved  in  one  common  denunciation  "  Claude, 
Gaspar  Poussin,  Salvator  Rosa,  Ruysdael,  Paul  Potter,  Cavaletto,  and  the  vari- 
ous Van-Somethings  and  Koek-Somethings,  more  especially  and  malignantly 
those  who  have  libelled  the  sea,"  it  was  no  wonder  that  affronted  authority 
raised  its  indignant  voice  and  thundered  at  him.  Affronted  authority,  how- 
ever, gained  little  by  its  thunder.  The  young  Oxford  graduate  possessed,  along 
with  genius  and  profound  conviction,  an  imperturbable  and  magnificent  self- 
conceit,  against  which  the  surges  of  angry  criticism  dashed  themselves  in  vain. 
Mr.  Ruskin,  when  putting  on  his  armor,  had  boasted  himself  as  one  who  takes 
it  off;  but  in  his  case  there  proved  to  be  little  rashness  in  the  premature  fortili- 
cation.  For  assuredly  that  book  overrode  and  bore  down  its  critics.  I  need 
not  follow  it  through  its  various  editions,  its  successive  volumes,  its  amplifica- 
tions, wherein  at  last  the  original  design,  the  vindication  of  Turner,  swelled  into 
an  enunciation  and  illustration  of  the  true  principles  of  landscape  art.  Nof  do 


186  JOHN  RUSKIN. 

1  mean  to  say  that  the  book  carried  all  its  points.  Far  from  it.  Claude  still 
lives,  and  Salvator  Rosa  has  his  admirers,  among  whom  most  of  us  are  very 
glad  to  enroll  ourselves ;  and  Ruskin  himself  has  since  that  time  pointed  out 
many  serious  defects  in  Turner,  and  has  unsaid  a  great  deal  of  what  he  then 
proclaimed.  But  if  the  Oxford  graduate  had  been  wrong  in  every  illustration 
of  his  principal  doctrine,  I  should  still  hold  that  the  doctrine  itself  was  true  and 
of  inestimable  value,  and  that  the  book  was  a  triumph.  For,  I  think,  it  pro- 
claimed and  firmly  established  the  true  point  of  view  from  which  we  must 
judge  of  the  art  of  painting  in  all  its  departments.  In  plain  words,  Ruskin 
taught  the  English  public  that  they  must  look  at  nature  with  their  own  eyes, 
and  judge  of  art  by  the  help  of  nature.  Up  to  the  publication  of  that  book 
England,  at  least,  had  been  falling  into  the  way  of  regarding  art  as  a  sort  of 
polite  school  to  which  it  was  our  duty  to  endeavor  to  make  nature  conform. 
Conventionality  and  apathy  had  sunk  apparently  into  the  very  souls  of  men 
and  women.  Hardly  one  in  ten  thousand  ever  really  saw  a  landscape,  a  wave, 
a  ray  of  the  sun  as  it  is.  Nobody  used  his  own  eyes.  Every  one  was  content 
to  think  that  he  saw  what  the  painters  told  him  he  saw.  Ruskin  himself  tells 
us  somewhere  about  a  test  question  which  used  to  be  put  to  young  landscape 
painters  by  one  who  was  supposed  to  be  a  master  of  the  craft:  "Where  do  you 
put  your  brown  tree  ?"  The  question  illustrates  the  whole  theory  and  school 
of  conventionality.  Conventionality  had  decreed  first  that  thei'e  are  brown 
trees,  and  next  that  there  cannot  be  a  respectable  landscape  without  a  brown 
tree.  Long  after  the  teaching  of  Ruskin  had  well-nigh  revolutionized  opinion 
in  England,  I  stood  once  with  a  lover  of  art  of  the  old-fashioned  school,  look- 
ing on  one  of  the  most  beautiful  and  famous  scenes  in  England.  The  tender 
autumn  season,  the  melancholy  woods  in  the  background,  the  little  lake,  the 
half-ruined  abbey,  did  not  even  need  the  halo  of  poetic  and  romantic  associa- 
tion which  hung  around  them  in  order  to  render  the  scene  a  very  temptation, 
one  might  have  thought,  to  the  true  artist.  I  suggested  something  of  the  kind. 
My  companion  shook  his  head  almost  contemptuously.  "  You  could  never 
make  a  picture  of  that,"  he  said.  I  pressed  him  to  tell  me  why  so  picturesque 
a  scene  could  not  be  represented  somehow  in  a  picture.  He  did  not  care  evi- 
dently to  argue  with  ignorance,  and  he  even  endeavored  to  concede  something 
to  my  untutored  whim.  "Perhaps,"  he  began  with  hesitation,  "if  one  were  to 
put  a  large  dark  tree  in  there  to  the  left,  one  might  make  something  of  it. 
But  no  "  (he  had  done  his  best  and  could  not  humor  me  any  further),  "  it  is  out 
of  the  question;  there  couldn't  be  a  picture  made  out  of  that."  How  could  I 
illustrate  more  clearly  the  kind  of  thing  which  Ruskin  came  to  put  down  and 
did  put  down  in  England  ? 

Of  course  Mr.  Ruskin  was  never  a  man  to  do  anything  by  halves,  and  hav- 
ing once  laid  down  the  canon  that  nature  and  truth  are  to  be  the  guides  of  the 
artist,  he  soon  began  to  write  and  to  think  as  if  nature  and  truth  alone  were 
concerned.  He  seemed  to  have  taken  no  account  of  the  fact  that  one  great  ob- 
ject of  art  is  simply  to  give  delight,  and  that  however  natural  and  truthful  an 
artist  may  be,  yet  he  is  to  bear  in  mind  this  one  purpose  of  his  work,  or  he 
might  almost  as  well  let  it  alone.  Nature  and  truth  are  to  be  his  guides  to  the 
delighting  of  men ;  to  show  him  how  he  is  to  give  a  delight  which  shall  be  pure 
and  genuine.  A  single  inaccuracy  as  to  fact  seems  at  one  time  to  have  spoiled 
all  Mr.  Ruskin's  enjoyment  of  a  painting,  and  filled  him  with  a  feeling  of  scorn 
and  detestation  for  it.  He  denounces  Raphael's  "  Charge  to  Peter,"  on  the 
ground  that  the  apostles  are  not  dressed  as  men  of  that  time  and  place  would 


JOHN  RUSKIN.  187 

have  been  when  going  out  fishing ;  and  he  makes  no  allowance  for  the  fact, 
pointed  out  by  M.  Taine,  that  Raphael's  design  first  of  all  was  to  represent  a 
group  of  noble,  serious  men,  majestic  and  picturesque,  and  that  mere  realism 
entered  little  into  his  purpose.     It  may  seem  the  oddest  thing  to  compare  Rus- 
kin  with  Macaulay,  but  it  is  certain  that  the  very  kind  of  objection  which  the 
former  urges   against   the   paintings  of  Raphael  the  latter   brings   forward 
against  one  of  the  poems  of  Goldsmith.     "  What  would  be  thought  of  a  paint- 
er," asks  Macaulay,  "  who  would  mix  January  and  August  in  one  landscape, 
who  would  introduce  a  frozen  river  into  a  harvest  scene?     Would  it  be  a  suffi- 
cient defence  of  such  a  picture  to  say  that  every  part  was  exquisitely  colored ; 
that  the  green  hedges,  the  apple  trees  loaded  with  fruit,  the  wagons  reeling 
under  the  yellow  sheaves,  and  the  sunburned  reapers  wiping  their  foreheads, 
were  very  fine;  and  that  the  ice  and  the  boys  sliding  were  also  very  fine?    To 
such  a  picture  the  '  Deserted  Village '  bears  a  great  resemblance."    Now  it 
would  indeed  be  an  incomprehensible  mistake  if  a  painter  were  to  mix  up  Au- 
gust and  January  as  Macaulay  suggests,  or  to  depict  the  apostles  like  a  group 
of  Greek  philosophers,  as  in  Ruskin's  opinion  Raphael  did.     But  I  venture  to 
think  that  even  the  extraordinary  blunder  mentioned  in  the  first  part  of  the 
sentence  would  not  necessarily  condemn  a  picture  to  utter  contempt.     It  was 
a  great  mistake  to  make  Dido  and  lulus  contemporaries ;  a  great  mistake  to 
represent  angels  employing  gunpowder  for  the  suppression  of  Lucifer's  insur- 
rection ;  a  great  mistake  to  talk  of  the  clock  having  struck  in  the  time  of  Julius 
Caesar.     Yet  I  suppose  Virgil  and  Milton  and  Shakespeare  were  great  poets, 
and  that  the  very  passages  in  which  those  errors  occur  are  nevertheless  gen- 
uine poetry.     Now  Ruskin  criticises   Raphael  and   Claude   on   precisely  the 
principle  which  would  declare  Virgil,  Milton,  and  Shakespeare  worthless  be- 
cause of  the  errors  I  have  mentioned.     The  errors  are  errors  no  doubt,  and 
ought  to  be  pointed  out,  and  there  an  end.     Virgil  was  not  writing  a  history  of 
the  foundation  of  Carthage.     Shakespeare  was  not  describing  the  social  life  of 
Rome  under  Julius  Caesar.     Milton  was  not  a  gazetteer  of  the  revolt  of  Lucifer 
and  his  angels.     Mr.  Ruskin  might  as  well  dispose  of  a  sculptured  group  of 
Centaurs  by  remarking  that  there  never  were  Centaurs,  or  of  the  famous  her- 
maphrodite in  the  Louvre  by  explaining  that  hermaphrodites  of  that  perfect 
order  are  unknown  to  physiology.     The  beauty  of  color  and  contour,  the  effect 
of  graceful  grouping,  the  reach  of  poetic  imagination,  the  dignity  of  embodied 
thought,  outlive  all  such  criticism  even  when  in  its  way  it  is  just,  for  they  bear 
in  themselves  the  vindication  of  their  existence.     But  Ruskin's  criticism  is  the 
legitimate  result  of  the  cardinal  error  of  his  career — the  belief  that  the  moral- 
ity of  art  exactly  corresponds  with  the  morality  of  human  life ;  that  there  is  a 
central  law  of  right  and  wrong  for  everything,  like  Stephen  Pearl  Andrews's 
universal  science,  of  which  when  you  have  once  got  the  key  you  can  open 
every  lock — which  is  the  solving  word  of  every  enigma,  the  standard  by  which 
everything  is  finally  to  be  judged.     I  need  ndt  show  how  he  followed  out  that 
creed  and  gave  it  a  new  application  in  "  The  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture  " 
and  the  "  Stones  of  Venice."     In  these  masterpieces  of  eloquent  declamation, 
the  building  of  houses  was  brought  up  to  be  tried  according  to  Mr.  Ruskin's 
self-constructed  canons  of  aesthetic  and  architectural  morality.     No  one,  I  ven- 
ture to  think,  cares  much  about  the  doctrine ;  everybody  is  carried  away  by  the 
eloquence,  the  originality,  and  the  feeling.     Later  still  Mr.  Ruskin  applied  the 
same  central,  all-pervading  principle  to  the  condemnation  of  fluttering  ribbons 
in  a  woman's  bonnet.    The  stucco  of  a  house  he  set  down  as  false  and  immoral, 


188  JOHN  RUSKIN. 

like  the  painting  of  a  meretricious  cheek.  His  aesthetic  transcendentalism  soon 
ceased  to  have  any  practical  influence.  It  would  be  idle  to  try  to  persuade 
English  house-builders  that  the  attributes  of  a  building  are  moral  qualities,  and 
that  the  component  parts  of  a  London  residence  ought  to  symbolize  and  embody 
"action,"  "voice,"  and  "beauty."  It  may  be  doubted  whether  a  single  archi- 
tect was  ever  practically  influenced  by  the  dogmatic  eloquence  of  Mr.  Ruskin. 
In  fact  the  architects,  above  all  other  men,  rebelled  against  the  books  and 
scorned  them.  But  the  books  made  their  way  with  the  public,  who,  oaring 
nothing  about  the  principles  of  morality  which  underlie  the  construction  of 
houses,  were  charmed  by  the  dazzling  rhetoric,  the  wealth  of  gorgeous  imagery, 
the  interesting  and  animated  digressions,  the  frequent  flashes  of  vigorous  good 
sense,  and  the  lofty  thought  whose  only  fault  was  that  which  least  affected  the 
ordinary  reader— its  utter  inapplicability  to  the  practical  subject  of  the  books. 

It  was  about  the  year  1849  that  that  great  secession  movement  in  art  broke 
out  to  which  its  leaders  chose  to  give  the  title  of  pre-Raphaelite.  The  principal 
founder  of  the  movement  has  since  been  almost  forgotten  as  an  artist,  but  has 
come  into  a  sort  of  celebrity  as  a  poet — Mr.  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti.  With  him 
were  allied,  it  is  almost  needless  to  say,  the  two  now  famous  and  successful 
painters,.  Hoi  man  Hunt  and  Millais.  Decidedly  that  was  the  most  thriving 
controversy  in  the  world  of  art  and  letters  during  our  time.  It  was  the  only 
battle  of  schools  which  coiild  tell  us  what  the  war  for  and  against  the  Sturm-und- 
Drang  school  in  Germany,  the  Byron  epoch  in  England,  the  struggle  of  the 
Classicists  and  Romanticists  in  France,  must  have  been  like.  The  pre-Raphael- 
ite dispute  has  long  ceased  to  be  heard.  Years  ago  Mr.  Ruskin  himself,  the 
prophet  and  apostle  of  the  new  sect,  described  the  defection  of  its  greatest  pu- 
pil as  "  not  a  fall,  but  a  catastrophe."  Rossetti's  sonnets  are  criticised,  but  not 
his  paintings.  "Are  not  you  still  a  pre-Raphaelite?  "  asked  an  inquisitive  per- 
son lately  of  the  sonneteer.  "  I  am  not  an  '  ite '  of  any  kind,"  was  the  answer; 
"  I  am  an  artist."  John  Everett  Millais  is  among  the  most  fortunate  and  fash- 
ionable painters  of  the  day.  Those  who  saw  his  wonderful  "  Somnambulist"  in 
last  season's  exhibition  of  the  London  Royal  Academy  would  have  found  in  it 
little  of  the  harsh  and  "  crawling  realism  "  which  distinguished  the  "  Beauty  in 
Bricks  Brotherhood,"  as  somebody  called  the  rebellious  school  of  twenty  years 
ago.  A  London  comic  paper  lately  published  a  capital  likeness  of  Mr.  Mil- 
lais, handsome,  respectable,  tending  to  stoutness  and  baldness,  and  described 
the  portrait  as  that  of  the  converted  pre-Raphaelite.  The  progress  of  things 
was  exactly  similar  to  that  which  goes  on  in  the  English  political  world  so  often. 
A  fiery  young  Radical  member  of  Parliament  begins  by  denouncing  the  Govern- 
ment and  the  constitution.  He  wins  first  notoriety,  and  then,  if  he  has  any  real 
stuff  in  him,  reputation ;  and  then  he  is  invited  to  office,  and  he  takes  it  and 
becomes  respectable,  wealthy,  and  fashionable;  and  his  rebellion  is  all  over, 
and  the  world  goes  on  just  as  before.  Such  was,  so  far  as  individuals  are  con- 
cerned, the  course  of  the  pre-Raphaelite  rebellion;  undoubtedly  the  movement 
did  some  good ;  most  rebellions  do.  It  was  a  protest  against  the  vague  and  fee- 
ble generalizations  and  the  vapid  classicism  which  were  growing  too  common 
in  art.  Ruskin  himself  has  happily  described  the  generalized  and  conventional 
way  of  painting  trees  and  shrubs  which  was  groAving  to  be  common  and  toler- 
ated, and  which  he  says  was  no  less  absurd  than  if  a  painter  were  to  depict  some 
anomalous  animal,  and  defend  it  as  a  generalization  of  pig  and  pony.  Any- 
thing which  teaches  a  careful  and  rigid  study  of  nature  must  do  good.  The 
pre-Raphaelite  school  was  excellent  discipline  for  its  young  scholars.  Proba- 


JOHX  RUSKIX.  189 

hly  even  those  of  Millais's  paintings  which  bear  on  the  face  of  them  least  evi- 
dent traces  of  that  early  school,  might  have  been  far  inferior  to  what  they  are, 
Avere  it  not  for  the  slow  and  severe  study  which  the  original  principles  of  the 
movement  demanded.  The  present  interest  which  the  secession  has  for  me 
is  less  on  its  own  account  than  because  of  the  vigorous,  ingenious,  and  eloquent 
pages  which  Ruskin  poured  forth  in  its  vindication.  He  gave  it  meanings 
which  it  never  had ;  found  out  truth  and  beauty  in  its  most  prosaic  details  such  as 
its  working  scholars  never  meant  to  symbolize ;  he  explained  and  expounded  it  as 
Johnson  did  the  meaning  of  the  word  "  slow  "  in  the  opening  line  of  the  "  Travel- 
ler," and  in  fact  well-nigh  persuaded  himself  and  the  world  that  a  new  priest- 
hood had  arisen  to  teach  the  divinity  of  art.  But  even  he  could  not  write  pre- 
Raphaelitism  into  popularity  and  vitality.  The  common  instinct  of  human 
nature,  which  looks  to  art  as  the  representative  of  beauty,  pathos,  humor,  and 
passion,  could  not  be  talked  into  an  acceptance  of  ignoble  and  ugly  realisms. 
It  may  be  an  error  to  depict  a  Judean  fisherman  like  a  stately  Greek  philoso- 
pher ;  but  error  for  error,  it  is  far  less  gross  and  grievous  than  to  paint  the  ex- 
quisite heroine  of  Keats's  lovely  poem  as  a  lank  and  scraggy  spinster,  with  high 
cheek  bones  like  one  of  Walter  Scott's  fishwives,  undressing  herself  in  a  green 
moonlight,  and  displaying  a  neck  and  shoulders  worthy  of  Miss  Miggs,  and 
st-ivs  and  petticoat  that  bring  to  mind  Tilly  Slowboy. 

The  pre-Raphaelite  mania  faded  away,  but  Ruskin's  vindication  endures ; 
just  as  the  letters  of  Pascal  are  still  read  by  every  one,  although  nobody  cares 
"  two  copper  spangles  "  about  the  controversy  which  provoked  them.  Mr. 
Ruskin's  mental  energy  did  not  long  lie  fallow.  Turning  the  bull's-eye  of  his 
central  theory  upon  other  subjects,  he  dragged  political  economy  up  for  judg- 
ment. Who  can  forget  the  whimsical  sensation  produced  by  the  appearance  in 
the  "Cornhill  Magazine"  of  the  letters  entitled  "Unto  this  Last"?  I  need  not 
say  much  about  them.  They  were  a  series  of  fantastic  sermons,  sometimes 
eloquent  and  instructive,  sometimes  turgid  and  absurd,  on  the  moral  duty  of 
man.  They  had  literally  nothing  to  do  with  the  subject  of  political  economy. 
The  political  economists  were  talking  of  one  thing,  and  Mr.  Ruskin  was  talking 
of  another  and  a  totally  different  thing.  The  value  of  an  article  is  what  it  will 
bring  in  the  market,  say  the  economists.  "  For  shame ! "  cries  Mr.  Ruskin ;  "  is 
the  value  of  her  rudder  to  a  ship  at  sea  in  a  tempest  only  what  it  would  be  bought 
for  at  home  in  Wapping?  "  So  on  through  the  whole,  the  two  disputants  talk- 
ing on  quite  different  subjects.  Mr.  Ruskin  might  just  as  reasonably  have  in- 
terrupted a  medical  professor  lecturing  to  his  class  on  the  effects  and  uses  of 
castor  oil,  by  telling  him  in  eloquent  verbiage  that  castor  oil  will  not  make 
men  virtuous  and  nations  great.  Nobody  ever  said  it  would;  but  it  is  impor- 
tant to  explain  the  properties  of  castor  oil  for  all  that.  It  would  be  a  grand 
thing  of  course  if,  as  Mr.  Ruskin  prayed,  England  would  "  cast  all  thoughts 
of  possessive  wealth  back  to  the  barbaric  nations  among  whom  they  first  arose," 
and  leave  "the  sands  of  the  Indus  and  the  adanmnt  of  Golconda"  to  "stiffen 
the  housings  of  the  charger,  and  flash  from  the  tm-ban  of  the  slave."  This 
would  be  ever  so  much  finer  than  opening  banks,  making  railways  (which  Mr. 
Ruskin  specially  detests),  and  dealing  in  stocks.  But  it  has  nothing  to  do,  good 
or  bad,  with  the  practical  exposition  of  the  economic  laws  of  banking  and 
exchange.  It  is  about  as  effective  a  refutation  of  the  political  economist's  doc- 
trines as  a  tract  from  the  Peace  Society  denouncing  all  war  would  be  to  a  lec- 
ture from  Von  Moltke  on  the  practical  science  of  campaigning.  But  Mr.  Rus- 
kin never  saw  this,  and  never  was  disconcerted.  He  turned  to  other  missions 


190  JOHN  RUSKIN. 

with  the  firm  conviction  that  he  had  finished  off  political  economy,  as  a  clever 
free-thinking  London  lady  calmly  announced  a  few  years  back  to  her  friends 
that  she  had  abolished  Christianity.  Then  Mr.  Ruskin  condemned  mines  and 
factories,  railways  and  engines.  With  all  the  same  strenuous  and  ornate  elo- 
quence he  passed  sentence  on  London  pantomimes  and  "cascades  of  girls," 
and  the  too  liberal  exposure  of  "  lower  limbs  "  by  the  young  ladies  composing 
those  cascades.  Nothing  is  too  trivial  for  the  omniscient  philosopher,  and 
nothing  is  too  great.  The  moral  government  of  a  nation  is  decreed  by  the 
same  voice  and  on  the  same  principles  as  those  which  have  prescribed  the 
length  of  a  lady's  waist-ribbon  and  the  shape  of  a  door-scraper.  The  first  Na- 
poleon never  claimed  for  himself  the  divine  right  of  intermeddling  with  and 
arranging  everything  more  complacently  than  does  the  mild  and  fragile  phi- 
losopher of  Denmark  Hill.  Be  it  observed  that  his  absolute  ignorance  of  a  sub- 
ject never  deters  Mr.  Ruskin  from  pronouncing  prompt  judgment  upon  it.  It 
may  be  some  complicated  question  of  foreign,  say  of  American  politics,  on 
which  men  of  good  ability,  who  have  mastered  all  the  facts  and  studied  the  ar- 
guments on  both  sides,  are  slow  to  pronounce.  Mr.  Ruskin,  boldly  acknowl- 
edging that  until  this  morning  he  never  heard  of  the  subject,  settles  it  out  of 
hand  and  delivers  final  judgment.  Sometimes  his  restless  impulses  and  his  ex- 
travagant way  of  plunging  at  conclusions  and  conjecturing  facts  lead  him  into 
unpleasant  predicaments.  He  delivered  a  manifesto  some  years  ago  upon  the 
brutality  of  the  lower  orders  of  Englishmen,  founded  on  certain  extraordinary 
persecutions  inflicted  on  his  friend  Thomas  Carlyle.  Behold  Carlyle  himself 
corning  out  with  a  letter  in  which  he  declares  that  all  these  stories  of  persecu- 
tion were  not  only  untrue,  but  were  "  curiously  the  reverse  of  truth."  Of 
course  every  one  knew  that  Ruskin  believed  them  to  be  time;  that  he  half 
heard  something,  conjectured  something  else,  jumped  at  a  conclusion,  and  as 
usual  regarded  himself  as  an  inspired  prophet,  compelled  by  his  mission  to 
come  forward  and  deliver  judgment  on  a  sinful  people. 

Mr.  Ruskin's  devotion  to  Carlyle  has  been  unfortunate  for  him,  as  it  has  for 
so  many  others.  For  that  which  is  reality  in  Carlyle  is  only  echo  and  imita- 
tion in  Ruskin,  and  the  latter  has  power  enough  and  a  field  wide  enough  of  his 
own  to  render  inexcusable  the  attempt  to  follow  slavishly  another  man.  More- 
over, Carlyle's  utterances,  right  or  wrong,  have  meaning  and  practical  applica- 
tion; but  when  Ruskin  repeats  them  they  become  meaningless  and  inapplica- 
ble. Mr.  Ruskin  endeavoring  to  apply  Cai-lyle's  dogmas  to  the  business  of  art 
and  social  life  and  politics  often  reminds  one  of  the  humorous  Hindoo  story  of 
the  Gooroo  Simple  and  his  followers,  who  went  through  life  making  the  most 
outrageous  blunders,  because  they  would  insist  on  the  literal  application  of  their 
traditional  maxims  of  wisdom  to  every  common  incident  of  existence.  When 
a  self-conceited  man  ever  consents  to  make  another  man  his  idol,  even  his 
very  self-conceit  only  tends  to  render  him  more  awkwardly  and  unconditionally 
devoted  and  servile.  The  amount  of  nonsense  that  Ruskin  has  talked  and 
written,  under  the  evident  conviction  that  thus  and  not  otherwise  would 
Thomas  Carlyle  have  dealt  with  the  subject,  is  something  almost  inconceiv- 
able. I  never  beard  of  Ruskin  taking  up  any  political  question  without  being 
on  the  wrong  side  of  it.  I  am  not  merely  speaking  of  what  I  personally  con- 
sider the  wrong  side ;  I  am  alluding  to  questions  which  history  and  hard  faet 
and  the  common  voice  and  feeling  of  humanity  have  since  decided.  Against 
every  movement  to  give  political  freedom  to  his  countrymen,  against  every 
movement  to  do  common  justice  to  the  negro  race,  against  every  effort  to 


JOIIX  RUSKIN.  191 

secure  fair  play  for  a  democratic  cause,  Mr.  Ruskin  has  peremptorily  arrayed 
himself.  "  I  am  a  Kingsman  and  no  Mobsman,"  he  declares ;  and  this  decla- 
ration seems  in  his  mind  to  settle  the  question  and  to  justify  his  vindication 
of  every  despotism  of  caste  or  sovereignty.  To  this  has  his  doctrine  of  aesthetic 
moral  law,  to  this  has  his  worship  of  Carlyle,  conducted  him. 

For  myself,  I  doubt  whether  Mr.  Ruskin  has  any  great  qualities  but  his  elo- 
quence, and  his  true,  honest  love  of  Nature.  As  a  man  to  stand  up  before  a 
society  of  which  one  part  was  fashionably  languid  and  the  other  part  only  too 
busy  and  greedy,  and  preach  to  it  of  Nature's  immortal  beauty  and  of  the  true 
way  to  do  her  reverence,  I  think  Ruskin  had  and  has  a  place  almost  worthy 
the  dignity  of  a  pi-ophet.  I  think,  too,  that  he  has  the  capacity  to  fill  the 
place,  to  fulfil  its  every  duty.  Surely  this  ought  to  be  enough  for  the  work  and 
for  the  praise  of  any  man.  But  the  womanish  restlessness  of  Ruskin's  tem- 
perament, combined  with  the  extraordinary  self-sufficiency  which  contributed 
so  much  to  his  success  when  he  was  master  of  a  subject,  sent  him  perpetually 
intruding  into  fields  where  he  was  unfit  to  labor,  and  enterprises  which  he  had 
no  capacity  to  conduct.  No  man  has  ever  contradicted  himself  so  often,  so 
recklessly,  so  complacently,  as  Mr.  Ruskin  has  done.  It  is  absurd  to  call  him 
a  great  critic  even  in  art,  for  he  seldom  expresses  any  opinion  one  day  without 
flatly  contradicting  it  the  next.  He  is  a  great  writer,  as  Rousseau  was — fresh, 
eloquent,  audacious,  writing  out  of  the  fulness  of  the  present  mood,  and  heed- 
less how  far  the  impulse  of  to-day  may  contravene  that  of  yesterday ;  but  as 
Rousseau  was  always  faithful  to  his  idea  of  Truth,  so  Ruskin  is  ever  faithful  to 
Nature.  When  all  his  errors  and  paradoxes  and  contradictions  shall  have 
been  utterly  forgotten,  this  his  great  praise  will  remain  :  No  man  since  Words- 
worth's brightest  days  ever  did  half  so  much  to  teach  his  countrymen,  and 
those  who  speak  his  language,  how  to  appreciate  and  honor  that  silent  Nature 
which  "  never  did  betray  the  heart  that  loved  her." 


CHARLES  READE. 


A  FEW  days  ago  I  came  by  chance  upon  an  old  number  of  an  illustrated 
publication  which  made  a  rather  brilliant  start  in  London  four  or  five 
years  since,  but  died,  I  believe,  not  long  after.  It  sprang  up  when  there  was 
a  sudden  rage  in  England  for  satirical  portraits  of  eminent  persons,  and  it 
really  showed  some  skill  and  humor  in  this  not  very  healthful  or  dignified  de- 
partment of  art.  This  number  of  which  I  speak  has  a  humorous  cartoon  called 
"Companions  of  the  Bath,"  and  representing  a  miscellaneous  crowd  of  the  cel- 
ebrated men  and  women  of  the  day  enjoying  a  plunge  in  the  waves  at  Havre, 
Dieppe,  or  some  other  French  bathing-place.  There  are  Gladstone  and  Dis- 
raeli ;  burly  Alexandre  Dumas  and  small,  fragile  Swinburne ;  Tennyson  and 
Longfellow ;  Christine  Nilsson  and  Adelina  Patti,  the  two  latter  looking  very 
pretty  in  their  tunics  and  calefons.  Most  of  the  likenesses  are  good,  and  the  atti- 
tudes are  often  characteristic  and  droll.  Mr.  Spurgeon  flounders  and  puffs  wildly 
in  the  waves;  Gladstone  cleaves  his  way  sternly  and  earnestly;  Mario  floats 
with  easy  grace.  One  group  at  present  attracts  very  special  attention.  It  re- 
presents a  big,  heavy,  gray-headed  man,  ungainly  of  appearance,  whom  a  smaller 
personage,  bald  and  neat,  is  pushing  off  a  plank  into  the  water.  The  smaller 
man  is  Dion  Boucicault;  the  larger  is  Mr.  Charles  Reade.  This  was  the  time 
when  Reade  and  Boucicault  were  working  together  in  "  Foul  Play."  The  in- 
sinuation of  the  artist  evidently  was  that  Boucicault,  always  ready  for  any 
plunge  into  the  waves  of  sensationalism,  had  to  give  a  push  to  his  hesitating 
companion  in  order  to  impel  him  to  the  decisive  "header." 

The  artist  has  been  evidently  unjust  to  Mr.  Reade.  Indeed,  one  can  hardly 
help  suspecting  that  there  must  have  been  some  little  personal  grievance  which 
the  pencil  was  employed  to  pay  off,  after  the  fashion  threatened  moi'e  than  onee 
by  Hogarth.  Mr.  Reade  is  not  an  Adonis,  but  this  attempt  at  his  likeness  is  cruelly 
grotesque  and  extravagant.  Charles  Reade  is  a  big,  heavy,  rugged,  gray  man ; 
a  sort  of  portlier  Walt  Whitman,  but  with  closer-cut  hair  and  beard ;  a  Walt 
Whitman,  let  us  say,  put  into  training  for  the  part  of  a  stout  British  vestryman. 
He  impresses  you  at  once  as  a  man  of  character,  energy,  and  originality,  al- 
though he  is  by  no  means  the  sort  of  person  you  would  pick  out  as  a  typical 
romaneist.  But  the  artist  who  has  delineated  him  in  this  cartoon,  and  who  has 
dealt  so  fairly,  albeit  humorously,  with  Tennyson  and  Swinburne  and  Longfel- 
low, must  surely  have  had  some  spite  against  the  author  of  "  Peg  Wonington  " 


CHARLES   REABF  193 

when  he  depicted  him  as  a  sort  of  huge  human  gorilla.  It  is  in  fact  for  this 
reason  only  that  I  have  thought  it  worth  while  to  introduce  an  allusion  to  such 
a  caricature.  The  caricature  is  in  itself  illustrative  of  my  subject.  It  helps 
to  introduce  an  inevitable  allusion  to  a  weakness  of  Mr.  Charles  Reade's  which 
makes  for  him  many  enemies  and  satirists  among  minor  authors,  critics,  and 
artists  in  London.  To  a  wonderful  energy  and  virility  of  genius  and  temper- 
ament Charles  Reade  adds  a  more  than  feminine  susceptibility  and  impa- 
tience when  criticism  attempts  to  touch  him.  With  a  faith  in  his  own  capacity 
and  an  admiration  for  his  own  works  such  as  never  were  surpassed  in  literary 
history,  he  can  yet  be  rendered  almost  beside  himself  by  a  disparaging  remark 
from  the  obscurest  critic  in  the  corner  of  the  poorest  provincial  newspaper. 
There  is  no  pen  so  feeble  anywhere  but  it  can  sting  Charles  Reade  into  some- 
thing like  delirium.  He  replies  to  every  attack,  and  he  discovers  a  personal 
enemy  in  every  critic.  Therefore  he  is  always  in  quarrels,  always  assailing 
this  man  and  being  assailed  by  that,  and  to  the  very  utmost  of  his  power  trying 
to  prevent  the  public  from  appreciating  or  even  recognizing  the  wealth  of  gen- 
nine  manhood,  truth,  and  feeling,  which  is  bestowed  everywhere  in  the  rugged 
ore  of  his  strange  and  paradoxical  character.  I  am  not  myself  one  of  Mr. 
Reade's  friends,  or  even  acquaintances ;  but  from  those  who  are,  and  whom  I 
know,  I  have  always  heard  the  one  opinion  of  the  sterling  integrity,  kindness, 
and  trueheartedness  of  the  man  who  so  often  runs  counter  to  all  principles  of 
social  amenity,  and  whose  bursts  of  impulsive  ill-humor  have  offended  many 
who  would  fain  have  admired. 

I  said  once  before  in  the  pages  of  "  The  Galaxy,"  when  speaking  of  anothei 
English  novelist,  that  Charles  Reade  seems  to  me  to  rank  more  highly  in 
America  than  he  does  in  England.  It  is  only  of  quite  recent  yeai-s  that  Eng- 
lish criticism  of  the  higher  class  has  treated  him  with  anything  like  fair  con- 
sideration. There  was  a  long  time  of  Reade's  growing  popularity  during 
which  such  criticism  declined  altogether  to  regard  him  au  sericux.  Even 
now  he  has  not  justice  done  to  him.  But  if  I  cannot  help  believing  that 
Mr.  Reade  rates  himself  far  too  highly,  and  announces  his  opinion  far  too 
frankly,  neither  can  I  help  thinking  that  English  criticism  in  general  fails  to 
do  him  justice.  For  a  long  time  he  had  to  struggle  hard  to  obtain  a  mer« 
recognition.  He  had  during  part  of  his  early  career  the  good  sense,  or  thw 
spirit,  or  the  misfortune,  according  as  people  choose  to  view  it,  to  write  in  on« 
of  the  popular  weekly  journals  of  London  which  correspond  somewhat  with  the 
"New  York  Ledger."  I  think  Charles  Dickens  described  Reade  as  the  one 
only  man  with  a  genuine  literary  reputation  who  at  that  time  had  ventured 
upon  such  a  performance.  There  are  indeed  men  now  of  undoubted  rank  in 
literature  who  began  their  career  with  work  like  this ;  but  they  did  not  put 
their  names  to  it,  and  the  world  was  never  the  wiser.  Reade  worked  boldly 
and  worked  his  best,  and  put  his  own  name  to  it ;  and  therefore  the  London 
press  for  some  time  regarded  or  affected  to  regfwd  him  as  an  author  of  that 
class  whose  genius  supplies  weekly  instalments  of  sensation  and  tremendously 
high  life,  to  delight  the  servant  girls  of  Islington  and  the  errand  boys  of  the 
City.  Long  after  the  issue  of  some  of  the  finest  novels  Reade  has  written,  the 
annual  publication  called  "  Men  of  the  Time  "  contained  no  notice  of  the  au- 
thor. The  odd  thing  about  this  is  that  Reade  is  an  author  of  the  very  class 
which  English  criticisms  of  the  kind  I  allude  to  ought  to  have  delighted  to 
encourage.  In  the  reaction  against  literary  Bohemianism,  which  of  late  years 
has  grown  up  in  England,  and  which  the  "  Saturday  Review  "  may  be  said 


194  CHARLES   READE. 

to  have  inaugurated,  it  became  the  whim  and  fashion  to  believe  that  only  gen- 
tlemen with  university  degrees,  only  "  blood  and  culture,"  as  the  cant  phrase 
was,  could  write  anything  which  gentlemanly  persons  could  find  it  worth  their 
while  to  read.  The  "  Saturday  Review  "  for  a  long  time  affected  to  treat  Dickens 
as  a  good-humored  and  vulgar  buffoon,  with  a  gift  of  genius  to  delight  the  lower 
classes.  It  usually  regarded  Thackeray  as  a  person  made  for  better  things,  who 
had  forfeited  his  position  as  a  gentleman  and  a  university  man  by  descend- 
ing to  literature  and  to  lectures.  Now  Charles  Reade  is  what  in  the  phrase- 
ology of  English  caste  would  be  called  a  gentleman.  He  is  of  good  English 
family ;  he  is  a  graduate  of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford.  He  is  a  man  of  culture 
and  scholarship.  His  reading,  and  especially  his  classical  acquirements,  I  pre- 
sume to  be  far  wider  and  deeper  than  those  of  Thackeray,  who,  it  need  hardly 
he  said,  was  as  Person  or  Parr  when  compared  with  Dickens.  Altogether 
Reade  seems  to  have  been  the  sort  of  man  whom  the  "  Saturday  Review,"  for 
example,  ought  to  have  taken  pi'omptly  up  and  patted  on  the  back  and  loftily 
patronized.  But  nothing  of  the  sort  occurred.  Reade  was  treated  merely  as  the. 
clever,  audacious  concocter  of  sensational  stories.  He  was  hardly  dealt 
with  as  an  artist  at  all.  The  reviews  only  began  to  come  round  when  they 
discovered  that  the  public  were  positively  Avith  the  new  and  stirring  roman- 
cist.  What  renders  this  more  curious  is  the  fact  that  the  earlier  novels  were 
incomparably  more  highly  finished  works  of  art  than  their  successors.  "  Peg 
Woffington  "  and  "  Christie  Johnstone  " — the  former  published  so  long  ago  as 
1852 — seem  almost  perfect  in  their  symmetry  and  beauty.  "  The  Cloister  and 
the  Hearth "  might  well-nigh  have  persuaded  a  reader  that  a  new  Walter 
Scott  was  about  to  arise  on  the  horizon  of  our  literature.  All  the  more  recent 
works  seem  crude  and  rough  by  comparison.  They  ought  to  have  been  the 
vigorous,  uncouth,  undisciplined  efforts  of  the  author's  earlier  3Tears.  They 
ought  to  have  led  up  to  the  "Cloister  and  the  Hearth"  and  "  Peg  Wofiing- 
tori,"  instead  of  succeeding  them.  Yet,  if  I  am  not  greatly  mistaken,  it  was 
while  he  was  publishing  those  earlier  and  finer  products  of  his  fresh  intellect 
that  Charles  Reade  was  especially  depreciated  and  even  despised  by  what  is 
called  high-class  English  criticism.  He  never  indeed  has  had  much  for  which 
to  thank  the  English  critics,  and  he  has  never  been  slow  to  express  his  pecu- 
liar sense  of  obligation;  but  assuredly  they  treated  with  greater  respect  the 
works  which  will  be  soonest  forgotten  than  those  on  which  he  may  perhaps  rest 
a  claim  to  a  more  enduring  reputation. 

The  general  public,  however,  soon  began  to  find  him  out.  "  Peg  Woffing- 
ton  "  was  a  decided  success.  Its  dramatic  adaptation  is  still  one  of  the  favorite 
pieces  of  the  English  stage.  "  It  is  Never  Too  Late  to  Mend  "  set  everybody 
talking.  Reade  began  to  devote  himself  to  exposing  this  or  that  social  and  legal 
grievance  calling  for  reform,  and  people  came  to  understand  that  a  new  branch 
of  the  art  of  novel-writing  was  in  process  of  development,  the  special  gift  of 
which  was  to  convert  a  Parliamentary  blue-book  into  a  work  of  fiction.  The 
treatment  of  criminals  in  prisons  and  in  far-off  penal  settlements,  the  manner 
in  which  patients  are  dealt  with  in  private  lunatic  asylums,  became  the  main 
subject  and  backbone  of  the  new  style  of  novel,  instead  of  the  misunderstandings 
of  lovers,  the  trials  of  honest  poverty,  or  the  struggles  for  ascendancy  in  the 
fashionable  circles  of  Belgravia.  Mr.  Reade  undoubtedly  stands  supreme  and 
indeed  alone  in  work  of  this  kind.  No  man  but  he  can  make  a  blue-book  live 
and  yet  be  a  blue-book  still.  When  Dickens  undertook  some  special  and  prac- 
tical question,  we  all  knew  that  we  had  to  look  for  lavish  outpouring  of  humor, 


CHARLES  READE.  195 

fancy,  and  eccentricity,  for  generous  pathos,  and  for  a  sentimental  misapplica- 
tion or  complete  elimination  of  the  actual  facts.  Miss  Martineau  made  dry 
little  stories  about  political  economy ;  and  Disraeli's  "  Sibyl "  is  only  a  fash- 
ionable novel  and  a  string  of  tracts  bound  up  together  and  called  by  one  name. 
But  Reade  takes  the  hard  and  naked  facts  as  h«  finds  them  in  some  newspaper 
or  in  the  report  of  some  Parliamentary  commission,  and  he  so  fuses  them  into 
the  other  material  whereof  his  romance  is  to  be  made  up  that  it  would  re- 
quire a  chemical  analysis  to  separate  the  fiction  from  the  reality.  You  are 
not  conseio-is  that  you  are  going  through  the  boiled-down  contents  of  a  blue- 
book.  You  have  no  aggrieved  sense  of  being  entrapped  into  the  dry  de- 
tails of  some  harassing  social  question.  The  reality  reads  like  romance; 
the  romance  carries  you  along  like  reality.  No  author  ever  indulged  in  a 
faii'er  piece  of  seif-glorification  than  that  contained  in  the  last  sentence  of  "  Put 
Yourself  in  his  Place":  "I  have  taken  a  few  undeniable  truths  out  of  many, 
and  have  labored  to  make  my  1'eaders  realize  those  appalling  facts  of  the  day 
which  most  men  know,  but  not  one  in  a  thousand  comprehends,  and  not  one  in 
a  hundred  thousand  realizes,  until  fiction — which,  whatever  you  may  have  been 
told  to  the  contrary,  is  the  highest,  widest,  noblest,  and  greatest  of  all  the  arts — 
comes  to  his  aid,  studies,  penetrates,  digests  the  hard  facts  of  chronicles  and 
blue-books,  and  makes  their  dry  bones  live."  To  this  object,  to  this  kind  of 
work,  Reade  seems  tS  have  deliberately  purposed  to  devote  himself.  It  was 
evidently  in  accordance  with  his  natural  tastes  and  sympathies.  He  Is  a  man 
of  exuberant  and  irrepressible  energy.  He  must  be  doing  something  definite 
always.  He  did  actually  bestir  himself  in  the  case  of  a  person  whom  he  be- 
lieved to  be  imjustly  confined  in  a  lunatic  asylum,  as  energetically  as  he  makes 
Dr.  Sampson  do  in  "  Hard  Cash,"  and  with  equal  success.  Most  of  the 
scenes  he  desci'ibes,  in  England  at  least,  have  thus  in  some  way  fallen  in  to 
be  part  of  his  own  experience.  Whatever  he  undertakes  to  do  he  does  with  a 
tremendous  earnestness.  His  method  of  workmanship  is,  I  believe,  something 
like  that  of  Mr.  Wilkie  Collins,  but  of  course  the  object  is  totally  different. 
Wilkie  Collins  collects  all  the  remarkable  police  cases  and  other  judicial  narra- 
tives he  can  find,  and  makes  what  Jean  Paul  Richter  called  "  quarry  "  of  them 
— a  vast  accumulation  of  materials  in  which  to  go  digging  for  subjects  and  illus- 
trations at  leisure.  Charles  Reade  does  the  same  with  blue-books  and  the  re- 
ports of  official  inquiries.  The  author  of  the  "Dead  Secret"  is  looking  for 
perplexing  little  mysteries  of  human  crime;  the  author  of  "Hard  Cash"  for 
stories  of  legal  or  social  wrong  to  be  redressed.  I  need  hardly  say,  perhaps, 
that  I  rank  Chai'les  Reade  high  above  Wilkie  Collins.  The  latter  can  string 
his  dry  bones  on  wires  with  remarkable  ingenuity ;  the  former  can,  as  he  fairly 
boasts,  make  the  diy  bones  live. 

Meanwhile,  let  us  follow  out  the  progress  of  Mr.  Charles  Reade  as  a  literary 
influence.  He  grows  to  have  a  distinct  place  and  power  in  England  quite  in- 
dependently of  the  reviewers,  and  at  last  the  very  storm  of  controversy  which 
his  books  awaken  compels  the  reviewers  themselves  to  take  him  into  ac- 
count. "  It  is  Never  Too  Late  to  Mend  "  raised  a  clamor  among  prison  dis- 
ciplinarians. Years  after  its  publication  it  is  brought  out  as  a  drama  in  Lon- 
don, and  its  first  appearance  creates  a  sort  of  riot  in  the  Princess's  Theatre. 
Hostile  critics  rise  in  the  stalls  and  denounce  it;  supporters  and  admirers  vehe- 
mently defend  it;  speeches  are  made  on  either  side.  Mr.  Reade  plunges  into 
the  arena  of  controvei'sy  a  day  or  two  after  in  the  newspapers,  assails  one  of 
the  critics  by  name,  and  charges  him  with  having  denounced  the  piece  in  the 
theatre,  and  aoolauded  his  own  denunciation  in  the  journal  for  which  he  wrote. 


196  CHARLES   READE. 

Some  friend  of  the  critic  replies  by  the  assertion  that  one  of  Mr.  Readers  most 
enthusiastic  literary  supporters  is  Mr.  Reade's  own  nephew.  All  this  sort  of 
thing  is  dreadfully  undignified,  but  it  brings  an  author  at  all  events  into  public 
notice,  and  it  did  for  Mr.  Reade  what  I  am  convinced  he  would  have  disdained 
to  do  consciously — it  "puffed"  his  books.  An  amusing  story  is  told  in  connec- 
tion with  the  production  of  this  drama.  An  East  End  manager  thought  of 
bringing  it  out.  (The  East  End,  I  need  hardly  say,  is  the  lower  and  poorer 
quarter  of  London.)  This  manager  came  and  studied  the  piece  as  produced  at 
the  West  End.  One  of  the  strong  scenes,  the  sensation  scene,  was  a  realistic 
exhibition  of  prison  discipline.  The  West  End  had  been  duly  impressed  and 
thrilled  with  this  scene.  But  the  East  End  manager  shook  his  head.  "  It 
would  never  do  for  me,"  he  said  despondingly  to  a  friend.  "  Not  like  the  real 
thing  at  all.  My  gallery  would  never  stand  it.  Bless  you,  my  fellows  know 
the  real  thing  too  well  to  put  up  with  that." 

In  this,  as  in  other  cases,  Mr.  Reade's  hot  temper,  immense  self-conceit, 
and  eager  love  of  controversy  plunged  him  into  discussions  from  which  an- 
other man  would  have  shrunk  with  disgust.  He  went  so  far  on  one  occasion 
as  to  write  to  the  editor  of  a  London  daily  paper,  threatening  that  if  his  books 
were  not  more  fairly  dealt  with  he  would  order  his  publisher  to  withdraw  his 
advertisements  from  the  offending  journal.  One  can  fancy  what  terror  the 
threat  of  a  loss  of  a  few  shillings  a  month  would  have  had  upon  the  proprie- 
tors of  a  flourishing  London  paper,  and  the  amount  of  ridicule  to  which  the 
hare  suggestion  of  such  a  thing  exposed  the  irritable  novelist.  But  Reade  was, 
and  probably  is,  incurable.  He  would  keep  pelting  his  peppery  little  notes  at 
the  head  of  any  and  everybody  against  whom  he  fancied  that  he  had  a  griev- 
ance. I  remember  one  peculiarly  whimsical  illustration  of  this  weakness, 
which  found  its  way  into  print  some  years  ago  in  London,  but  which  perhaps 
will  be  quite  new  in  the  United  States,  and  I  cannot  resist  the  temptation 
to  reproduce  it.  Once  upon  a  time,  it  would  seem  from  the  correspondence, 
Mr.  Reade  wrote  a  play  called  "  Gold,"  which  was  produced  at  Druiy  Lane 
Theatre.  Except  from  this  correspondence  I  own  that  I  never  heard  of  tin; 
play.  Subsequently,  Mr.  Reade  presented  himself  one  night  at  the  stage-door 
of  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  and  was  refused  admittance.  Mr.  Charles  Mathews 
was  then  performing  at  the  theatre,  and  Mr.  Reade  evidently  supposed  him  to 
have  been  the  manager  and  responsible  for  all  the  arrangements.  Therefore 
he  addressed  his  complaint  to  the  incomparable  light  comedian,  who  is  as  re- 
nowned for  easy  sparkling  humor  and  wit  off  the  stage  as  for  brilliant  acting 
on  it.  Here  is  the  correspondence;  and  we  shall  see  how  much  Mr.  Reade 
took  by  his  motion : 

GARRICK  CLUB,  COVEXT  GARDEN,  November  28. 

DEAR  SIR  :  I  was  stopped  the  other  night  at  the  stage-door  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre  by 
people  whom  I  remember  to  have  seen  at  the  Lyceum  under  your  reign. 

This  is  the  first  time  such  an  affront  was  ever  put  upon  me  in  any  theatre  where  I  had 
produced  a  play,  and  is  without  precedent  unless  when  an  affront  was  intended.  As  I  never 
forgive  an  affront,  I  am  not  hasty  to  suppose  one  intended.  It  is  very  possible  that  this  was 
done  inadvertently  ;  and  the  present  stage-list  may  have  been  made  out  without  the  older 
claims  being  examined. 

Will  you  be  so  kind  as  to  let  me  know  at  once  whether  this  is  so,  and  if  the  people  who 
stopped  me  at  the  stage-door  are  yours,  will  you  protect  the  author  of  "  Gold,"  etc.,  from 
any  repetition  of  such  an  annoyance  ? 

I  am,  dear  sir,  yours  faithfully, 

CHARLES  READE. 


CHARLES   READE.  107 

To  this  imperious  demand  Mr.  Reade  received  next  day  the  following  ge 

nial  answer: 

T.  R.,  DRURT  LANE,  November  29. 

DEAR  SIR  :  If  ignorance  is  bliss  on  general  occasions,  on  the  present  it  certainly  would 
be  folly  to  be  wise.  I  am  therefore  happy  to  be  able  to  inform  you  that  I  am  ignorant  of 
your  having  produced  a  play  at  this  theatre  ;  ignorant  that  you  are  the  author  of  "  Gold  ''  ; 
ignorant  of  the  merits  of  that  play  ;  ignorant  that  your  name  has  been  erased  from  the  list 
at  the  stage-door  ;  ignorant  that  it  had  ever  been  on  it ;  ignorant  that  you  had  presented 
yourself  for  admittance  ;  ignorant  that  it  had  been  refused  ;  ignorant  that  such  a  refusal  was 
without  precedent ;  ignorant  that  in  the  man  who  stopped  you  you  recognized  one  of  the 
persons  lately  with  me  at  the  Lyceum  ;  ignorant  that  the  doorkeeper  was  ever  in  that  thea- 
tre ;  ignorant  that  you  never  forgive  an  affront ;  ignorant  that  any  had  been  offered  ;  igno- 
rant of  when,  how,  or  by  whom  the  list  was  made  out,  and  equally  so  by  whom  it  was  al- 
tered. 

Allow  me  to  add  that  I  am  quite  incapable  of  offering  any  discourtesy  to  a  gentleman  I 
have  barely  the  pleasure  of  knowing,  and  moreover  have  no  power  whatever  to  interfere  with 
Mr.  Smith's  arrangements  or.  disarrangements  ;  and,  with  this  wholesale  admission  of  igno- 
rance, incapacity,  and  impotence,  believe  me 

Faithfully  yours, 

C.  T.  MATHEWS. 

CHARLES  READE,  ESQ. 

The  correspondence  got  into  print  somehow,  and  created,  I  need  hardly 
say,  infinite  merriment  in  the  literary  clubs  and  circles  of  London.  Not  all 
disputes  with  Charles  Reade  ended  so  humorously,  for  the  British  novelist  is  as 
fond  of  actions  at  law  as  Fenimore  Cooper  used  to  be.  Thus  more  than  one 
critic  has  had  to  dread  the  terrors  of  an  action  for  damages  when  he  has  ven- 
tured in  a  rash  moment  to  disparage  the  literary  value  of  Mr.  Reade's  teach- 
ing. Lately,  however,  in  the  case  of  the  "Times,"  and  its  attack  on  "A  Ter- 
rible Temptation,"  Mr.  Reade  adopted  the  unexpected  tone  of  mild  and  even 
flattering  remonstrance.  Whether  he  thought  it  hopeless  to  alarm  the  "  Times  " 
by  any  threat  of  action,  or  feared  that  if  he  wrote  a  savage  letter  the  journal 
would  not  even  give  him  the  comfort  of  seeing  it  in  print,  I  do  not  know.  But 
he  certainly  took  a  meek  tone  and  endeavored  to  propitiate,  and  got  rather 
coarsely  rebuked  for  his  pains.  People  in  London  were  amused  to  find  that  he 
could  be  thus  mild  and  gentle.  I  do  remember,  however,  that  on  one  occasion 
he  wrote  a  letter  of  remonstrance,  which  was  probably  intended  to  be  a  kind 
of  rugged  compliment  to  the  "  Saturday  Review,"  a  paper  which  likewise  cares 
nothing  about  actions  for  damages.  Usually,  however,  his  tone  of  argument 
with  his  critics  is  perfervid,  and  his  estimate  of  himself  is  exquisitely  candid. 
In  one  of  his  manifestoes  he  assured  the  world  that  he  never  allowed  a  publisher 
to  offer  any  suggestions  with  regard  to  his  story,  but  simply  sold  the  manu- 
script in  bulk — "  c'est  a  prendre  ou  a  laisser."  In  another  instance  he  spoke 
of  one  of  his  novels  as  "  floating  "  the  serial  publication  in  which  it  was  making 
its  appearance,  and  which  we  were  therefore  given  to  understand  would  have 
sunk  to  the  bottom  but  for  his  cooperation.  In  sh*ort,  it  is  well  known  in  Lon- 
don that  Mr.  Charles  Reade's  character  is  disfigured  by  a  self-conceit  which 
amounts  to  something  like  mania,  and  an  impatience  of  criticism  which  occa- 
sionally makes  him  all  but  a  laughing-stock  to  the  public.  Rarely,  indeed,  in 
literary  history  have  high  and  genuine  talents  been  united  with  such  a  flatu- 
lence of  self-conceit. 

Probably  Reade  had  reached  his  highest  position  just  after  the  publication 
of  "  Hard  C;ish."  This  remarkable  novel,  crammed  with  substance  enough  to 
make  h;ilf  a  dozen  novels,  appeared  in  the  first  instance  in  Dickens's  "  All  the 
1'ear  Round."  Dickens  himself,  if  I  remember  rightly,  felt  bound  to  publish  a 


198 


CHAULES  READE. 


note  disclaiming  any  concurrence  in  or  psrsonal  responsibility  for  the  attacks 
on  the  private  madhouse  system,  and  the  whole  subject  aroused  a  very  lively 
controversy,  wherein,  I  think,  Reade  certainly  was  not  worsted.     The  "  Grif- 
fith Gaunt"  controversy  we  all  remember.     I  confess  that  I  have  no  sympathy 
whatever  with  the  kind  of  criticism  which  treats  any  of  Mr.  Reade's  works  as 
immoral  in  tendency,  and  I  think  the  charge  was  even  more  absurd  when 
urged  against  "Griffith  Gaunt"  than  when   pressed   against  the   "Terrible 
Temptation."     To   me  the  clear  tendency  of  Reade's  novels  seems   always 
healthy,  purifying,  and  bracing,  like  a  fresh,  strong  breeze.     I  cannot  under- 
stand how  any  man  or  woman  could  be  the  worse  for  reading  one  of  them. 
They  are  always  novels  with  a  purpose,  and  I,  at  least,  never  could  discern 
any  purpose  in  them  which  was  not  honest  and  sound.     I  feel  inclined  to  ex- 
cuse all  Reade's  vehemence  of  self-vindication  and  childish  frankness  of  self- 
praise  when  I  read  some  of  the  attacks  against  what  people  try  to  paint  as  the 
immorality  of  his  books.     But  I  need  not  go  into  that  controversy.     Enough  to 
say  for  my  own  part  that  I  found  " Griffith  Gaunt"  a  grim  and  dreary  book — 
a  tiresome  book,  in  fact;  but  I  saw  nothing  in  it  which  could  with  any  justice 
be  said  to  have  the  slightest  tendency  to  demoralize  any  reader.     I  have  indeed 
heard  people  who  are  in  general  fair  critics  condemn  "  Adam  Bede  "  as  im- 
moral because  Hetty  is  seduced;  and  I  have  even  heard  poor  Maggie  Tulliver 
rated  as  unfit  for  decent  society  because  she  ever  allowed  even  a  moment's 
thought  of  her  cousin's  engaged  lover  to  enter  her  mind.     On  this  principle, 
doubtless,  "Griffith  Gaunt"  is  immoral.     There  are  people  in  the  book  who 
commit  sin,  and  yet  are  not  eaten  by  lions  or  bodily  carried  down  below  like 
Don  Juan.     But  if  we  are  to  have  novels  made  up  only  of  good  people  who  al- 
ways'do  right  and  the  one  stock  villain  who  always  does  wrong,  I  think  the 
novelist's  art  cannot  too  soon  be  delegated  to  its  only  fitting  province — the 
amusement  of  the  nursery.     "  Griffith  Gaunt,"  however,  I  regard  as  a  falling 
off,  because  it  is  a  sour,  unpleasant,  and  therefore  inartistic  book.     "  Foul 
Play  "  was  a  clever  tour  de  force,  a  brilliant  thing,  made  to  sell,  with  hardly 
more  character  in  it  than  would  suffice  for  a  Bowery  melodrama.     "  Put  Your- 
self in  his  Place  "  was  a  wholesome  return  to  the  former  style,  a  marrowy, 
living  blue-book,  instinct  with  power  and  passion.     "  A  Terrible  Temptation  " 
I  do  not  admire.     I  do  not  think  it  immoral,  but  it  hardly  calls  for  any  delib- 
erate, criticism.     Since  "Hard  Cash"  Mr.  Reade  has,  in  my  opinion,  written 
only  one  novel  which  the  literary  world  will  care  to  preserve,  and  even  that 
one,  "Put  Yourself  in  his  Place,"  can  hardly  be  said  to  add  one  cubit  to  his 
stature. 

Mr.  Reade  has,  I  believe,  rather  a  passion  for  dramatic  enterprise,  and  a 
characteristic  faith  in  his  power  to  turn  out  a  good  drama.  A  season  or  two 
back  he  hired,  I  am  told,  a  London  theatre,  in  order  to  have  the  complete  su- 
perintendence of  the  production  of  one  of  his  novels  turned  into  a  drama.  I 
have  been  assured  that  the  dramatic  version  was  accomplished  entirely  by  him- 
self. If  so,  I  am  sure  no  enemy  could  have  more  cruelly  damaged  the  original 
work.  All  the  character  was  completely  sponged  out  of  it.  The  one  really 
effective  and  original  personage  in  the  novel  did  not  appear  in  the  play.  A 
number  of  the  most  antique  and  conventional  melodramatic  situations  and  sur- 
prises were  crammed  into  the  piece.  All  the  silly  old  stage  business  about 
mysterious  conspiracies  carried  on  under  the  very  ear  of  the  identical  person- 
age who  never  ought  to  have  been  allowed  to  hear  them  arc  called  in  to  form 
an  essential  feature  of  the  drama.  The  play,  of  course,  was  not  successful,  al- 
though the  novel  had  in  it  naturally  all  the  elements  of  a  stirring  and  powerful 
drama.  If  Charles  Reade  really  with  his  own  hand  converted  a  vigorous  and 


CHARLES   READE.  199 

thrilling  story  into  that  limp,  languid,  and  vapid  play,  it  was  surely  the  most 
awful  warning  against  amateur  dramatic  enterprise  that  ever  self-eonceit  could 
receive  undismayed. 

Of  course  we  won't  rank  Mr.  Reade  as  one  of  the  most  popular  novelists 
now  in  England.  But  his  popularity  is  something  very  different  indeed  from 
that  of  Dickens,  or  even  from  that  of  Thackeray.  In  Forster's  "  Life  of  Dick- 
ens "  there  is  a  letter  of  the  great  novelist's  in  which  he  complains  of  having 
been  treated  (by  Bentley,  I  think)  no  better  than  any  author  who  had  sold  but 
fifteen  hundred  copies.  I  should  think  the  occasions  were  very  rare  when  Mr. 
Reade's  circulation  in  England  went  much  beyond  lifteen  hundred  copies.  Th« 
whole  system  of  publishing  is  so  different  in  England  from  that  which  prevails 
in  America,  our  fictitious  prices  and  the  controlling  monopoly  of  our  great 
libraries  so  restrict  and  limit  the  sale,  that  a  New  York  reader  would  perhaps 
hardly  believe  how  small  a  number  constitute  a  good  circulation  for  an  Eng- 
lish novelist.  I  assume  that,  speaking  roughly,  Reade,  Wilkie  Collins,  and 
Trollope  may  be  said  to  have  about  the  same  kind  of  circulation — almost  im- 
measurably below  Dickens,  and  below  some  such  abnormal  sale  as  that  of 
"  Lothair  "  or  "  Lady  Audley's  Secret,"  but  much  above  even  the  best  of  the 
younger  novelists.  I  venture  to  think  that  not  one  of  these  three  popular  and 
successful  authors  may  be  counted  on  to  reach  a  circulation  of  two  thousand 
copies.  Probably  about  eighteen  hundred  copies  would  be  a  decidedly  good 
thing  for  one  of  Charles  Reade's  novels.  Of  the  three,  I  should  say  that 
Wilkie  Collins  has  the  most  eager  readers;  that  Trollope's  novels  take  the 
highest  place  in  what  is  called  "society  " ;  and  that  Reade's  rank  the  best  among 
men  of  brains.  But  there  is  so  wide  a  difference  between  the  popularity  of 
Dickens  and  that  of  Reade  that  it  seems  almost  absurd  to  employ  the  same 
word  to  describe  two  things  so  utterly  unlike.  It  is,  indeed,  a  remarkable 
proof  of  Reade's  power  and  success  that,  setting  out  as  he  always  does  to  tell  a 
story  which  shall  convey  information  and  a  purpose  of  some  practical  kind,  he 
can  get  any  sort  of  large  circulation  at  all.  For  one  great  charm  and  excel- 
lence of  our  library  system  is  that  it  creates  a  huge  class  of  regular,  I  might 
almost  say  professional,  novel-readers,  who  subscribe  to  Mudie's  by  the  year, 
want  to  get  all  the  reading  they  can  out  of  it,  and  instinctively  shudder  at  tho 
thought  of  any  novel  that  is  weighted  by  solid  information  and  overtaxing 
thought.  This  is  the  class  for  whom  and  by  whom  the  circulating  libraries 
exist,  and  Mr.  Reade  deserves  the  full  credit  of  having  utterly  disregarded 
them,  or  rather  boldly  encountered  them,  and  at  least  to  some  extent  com- 
pelled them  to  read  him. 

Mr.  Reade's  position  as  a  novelist  may  be  adjudged  now  as  safely  as  ever 
a  novelist's  place  can  be  fixed  by  a  contemporary  generation.  He  is  nearly 
sixty  years  old,  and  he  has  written  about  a  dozen  novels.  It  is  not  likely  that 
he  will  ever  write  anything  which  could  greatly  enhance  the  estimate  the  pub- 
lic have  already  formed  of  him ;  and  no  future  failures  could  affect  his  past 
success.  I  think  his  career  is,  therefore,  fairly  and  fully  before  us.  We  know 
how  singularly  limited  his  dramatis  persona  are.  He  marches  them  on  and 
off  the  stage  boldly  ever  so  often,  and  by  a  change  of  dresses  every  now  and 
then  he  for  a  while  almost  succeeds  in  making  us  believe  that  he  has  a  very 
full  company  at  his  command.  But  we  soon  get  to  know  every  one  by  sight, 
and  can  swear  to  him  or  her,  no  matter  by  what  name  or  garb  disguised.  We 
know  the  sweet,  impulsive,  incoherent  heroine,  who  is  always  contradicting 
herself  and  saying  what  she  ought  not  to  say  and  does  not  mean  to  say;  who 
now  denounces  the  hero,  and  then  falls  upon  his  neck  and  vows  that  she  loves 
him  more  than  life.  This  young  woman  is  sometimes  Julia  and  sometimes 


L'OO  CHARLES   REAE5. 

Helen  and  sometimes  Grace;  she  now  is  exiled  for  a  while  on  a  lonely  island, 
and  even  she  is  carried  away  by  a  flood;  but  in  every  case  she  is  just  the  same 
girl  rescued  by  the  same  hero.     That  hero  is  always  a  being  of  wonderful 
mechanical  and  scientific  knowledge  of  some  kind  or  other,  whether  as  Cap- 
fciin  Dodd  he  makes  love  to  Lucy  Fountain,  or  as  Henry  Little  he  captivates 
Grace  Garden,  or  as  the  gentleman  in  "Foul  Play  "  he  cures  the  heroine  of 
consumption  and  builds  island  huts  better  than  Robinson  Crusoe.     Then  we 
have  the  rough,  clever,  eccentric  personage,  Dr.  Sampson  or  Dr.  Amboyne, 
whose  business  principally  is  to  act  a  part  like  that  of  Herr  Mittler  in  Goethe's 
Hovel,  and  help  the  characters  of  the  book  through  every  difficulty.     Then  we 
have  the  white-livered  sneak,  the  villain  of  the  book  when  he  is  bad  enough 
for  such  a  part;  the  Coventry  of  "Put  Yourself  in  his  Place";  I  forget  what 
his  name  is  in  "Foul  Play."     These  are  the  puppets  which  principally  make  up 
the  show.     Very  vigorously  and  cleverly  do  they  dance,  and  capitally  do  they 
imitate  life ;  but  there  are  so  very  few  of  them  that  we  grow  a  little  tired  of 
seeing  them  over  and  over  again.     Indeed,  Charles  Reade's  array  of  characters 
sometimes  reminds  us  of  the  simple  system  of  Plautus,  in  which  we  have  for 
every  play  the  same  types  of  people — the  rather  stingy  father,  the  embarrassed 
lover,  the  clever  comic  slave,  and  so  forth.     It  cannot  be  said  that  Reade  has 
added  a  single  character  to  fiction.     He  understands  human  nature,  or  at  least 
such  types  of  it  as  he  habitually  selects,  very  well,  and  he  draws  vigorously  his 
figures  and  groups;  but  he  has  discovered  nothing  fresh,  he  has  rescued  no  ex- 
istence from  the  commonplace  and  evanescent  realistics  of  life,  to  be  preserved 
immortal  in  a  work  of  art.     Not  one  of  his  characters  is  cited  in  ordinary  con- 
versation or  in  the  writings  of  journalists.     Nobody  quotes  from  him  unless  in 
reference  to  some  one  of  the  stirring  social  topics  which  he  lias  illustrated,  and 
even  then  only  as  one  would  quote  from  a  correspondent  of  the  "Times." 
Every  educated  man  and  woman  in  England  is  assumed,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
to  be  familiar  with  the  works  of  George  Eliot;  but  nobody  is  necessarily  as- 
sumed to  have  read  Charles  Reade.     That  educated  people  do  read  him  and  do 
admire  him  is  certain;  but  it  is  quite  a  matter  of  option  with  them  to  read  him 
or  let  him  alone  so  far  as  society  and  public  opinion  are  concerned.     There  are 
certain  tests  and  evidences  of  a  novelist's  having  attained  a  front-rank  place  in 
England  which  are  unmistakable.     They  are  purely  social,  may  be  only  super- 
ficial, and  will  neither  one  way  nor  the  other  affect  the  views  of  foreign  critics 
or  of  posterity ;  but  they  are  decisive  as  far  as  England  is  concerned.     Among 
them  I  shall  mention  two  or  three.     One  is  the  fact  that  writers  in  the  press 
allude  to  some  of  his  characters  without  feeling  bound  to  explain  in  whose 
novel  and  what  novel  the  characters  appear.     Another  is  the  fact  that  artists 
voluntarily  select  from  his  works  subjects  for  paintings  to  be  sent  to  the  Royal 
Academy's  annual  exhibition  or  elsewhere.     A  third  is  the  fact  that  articles 
about  him,  not  formal  reviews  of  a  work  just  published,  appear  pretty  often  in 
the  magazines.     Now,  whatever  may  be  the  genius  and  merits  of  an  author,  I 
think  he  cannot  be  said  to  have  attained  the  front  rank  in  English  public 
opinion  unless  he  can  show  these  evidences  of  success ;  and,  so  far  as  I  know, 
Mr.  Reade  cannot  show  any  of  them.     For  myself,  I  do  not  believe  that  Mr. 
Reade  ever  could  under  any  circumstances  have  become  a  really  great  novelist. 
All  the  higher  gifts  of  imagination  and  all  the  richer  veins  of  humor  hare  been 
denied  to  him.     Not  one  gleam  of  poetic  fancy  ever  seems  to  have  floated 
across  the  nervous  Saxon  of  his  style.     He  is  a  powerful  story-teller,  who  has 
a  manly  purpose  in  every  tale  he  tells,  and  that  is  all.     That  surely  is  a  great 
deal.     No  one  tells  a  story  more  thrillingly.     Once  you  begin  to  listen,  you 


CHARLES  READE.  201 

cannot  release  yourself  from  the  spell  of  the  raconteur  until  all  be  clone.  A 
strong,  healthy  air  of  honest  and  high  purpose  breathes  through  nearly  all  thu 
stoi'ies.  An  utter  absence  of  cant,  affectation,  and  sham  distinguishes  them.  A 
surprising  variety  of  descriptive  power,  at  once  bold,  broad,  and  realistic,  is 
one  of  their  great  merits.  Mr.  Reade  can  describe  a  sea-fight,  a  storm,  tlw 
forging  of  a  horseshoe,  the  ravages  of  an  inundation,  the  trimming  of  a  lady's 
dress,  the  tuning  of  a  piano,  with  equal  accuracy  and  apparent  zest.  I  onoo 
heard  an  animated  discussion  in  a  literary  club  as  to  whether  the  scrap  of  mi- 
nute description  was  artistic  and  effective  or  absurd  and  ludicrous  which  makes 
us  acquainted  with  the  fact  that  when  Henry  Little  dragged  Grace  Garden  out 
of  the  raging  flood,  the  force  of  the  water  washed  away  the  heroine's  stock- 
ings and  garters  and  left  her  barefoot.  Some  irreverent  critics  would  only 
laugh  at  the  gravity  with  which  the  author  detailed  this  important  circum- 
stance. Others,  however,  insisted  that  this  little  touch,  so  homely,  and  to  the 
profane  mind  so  exceedingly  ridiculous,  was  necessary  and  artistic ;  that  it 
heightened  the  effect  of  the  great  word-picture  previously  shown  by  the  force 
of  its  practical  and  circumstantial  reality.  However  this  momentous  contro- 
versy may  settle  itself  in  the  estimation  of  readers,  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
some  at  least  of  Reade's  success  is  due  to  the  courage  and  self-reliance  which 
will  brave  the  risk  of  being  ridiculous  for  the  sake  of  being  real  and  effective. 
Indeed,  Mr.  Reade  wants  no  quality  wliich  is  necessary  to  make  a  powerful 
story-teller,  while  he  is  distinguished  from  all  mere  story-tellers  by  the  fact 
that  he  has  some  great  social  object  to  serve  in  nearly  everything  he  under- 
takes to  detail.  More  than  this  I  do  not  believe  he  is,  nor,  despite  the  evi- 
dences of  something  yet  higher  which  were  given  in  "  Christie  Johnstone  " 
and  "  The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth,"  do  I  think  he  ever  could  have  been.  He 
is  a  magnificent  specimen  of  the  modern  special  correspondent,  endowed  with 
the  additional  and  unique  gift  of  a  faculty  for  throwing  his  report  into  the 
form  of  a  thrilling  story.  But  it  requires  something  more  than  this,  some- 
thing higher  than  this,  to  make  a  great  novelist  whom  the  world  will  always 
remember.  Mr.  Reade  is  unsurpassed  in  the  second  class  of  English  novelists, 
but  he  does  not  belong  to  the  front  rank.  His  success  has  been  great  in  its 
way,  but  it  is  for  an  age  and  not  for  time. 


THE    EXILE-WORLD   OF    LONDON. 


LEICESTER  SQUARE  and  the  region  that  lies  around  it  are  convention- 
ally regarded  as  the  exile  quarter  of  London.  The  name  of  Leicester 
square  suggests  the  idea  of  an  exile,  as  surely  and  readily,  even  to  the  mind  of 
one  who  has  never  looked  on  the  mournful  and  decaying  enclosure,  as  the  name 
of  Billingsgate  does  that  of  fish-woman,  or  the  name  of  the  Temple  that  of  a 
law-student.  Yet,  if  a  stranger  visiting  London  thinks  he  is  likely  to  see  any 
exile  of  celebrity,  while  pacing  the  streets  which  branch  oft"  Leicester  square, 
he  will  be  almost  as  much  mistaken  as  if  he  were  to  range  Eastcheap  in  the 
hope  of  meeting  the  wild  Prince  and  Poins. 

Many  a  conspiracy  has  had  its  followers  and  understrappers  in  the  Leicester 
square  region ;  but  the  great  conspirators  do  not  live  there  any  more.  The 
place  is  falling,  falling  ;  the  foreign  and  distinctive  character  of  the  population 
remains  as  marked  as  ever,  but  the  foreigners  whom  London  people  would  care 
to  see  are  not  to  be  found  there  any  longer.  The  exiles  who  have  made  part  of 
history,  whose  names  -are  on  record,  do  not  care  for  Leicester  square.  They 
are  to  be  found  in  Kensington,  in  Brompton,  in  Hampstead  and  Highgate  ;  in 
the  Regent's  Park  district ;  a  few  in  Bloomsbury,  a  few  in  Mayfair.  A  marble 
slab  and  an  inscription  now  mark  the  house  in  King  street,  St.  James's,  where 
Louis  Napoleon  lodged  ;  and  there  is  a  house  in  Belgrave  square  dear  to  all 
true  Legitimists,  where  the  Count  de  Chambord  ("  Henri  Cinq")  received  Ber- 
ryer  and  his  brother  pilgrims.  Only  poor  exiles  herd  together  now  in  London. 
Only  poverty,  I  suppose,  ever  causes  nationalities  to  herd  together  anywhere. 
The  men  who  group  around  Leicester  square  are  the  exiles  without  a  fame  ;  the 
subterranean  workers  in  politics  ;  the  men  who  come  like  shadows,  and  so  de- 
part ;  the  men  whose  names  are  writ  in  water,  even  though  their  life-paths  may 
have  been  marked  in  blood. 

Living  in  London,  I  had  of  late  years  many  opportunities  of  meeting  with  the 
exiles  of  each  class.  I  know  few  men  more  to  be  pitied  than  the  great  majority 
of  those  who  make  up  the  latter  or  Leicester  square  section.  On  the  other 
hand,  I  should  say  that  few  men,  indeed,  are  more  to  be  envied  by  any  of  their 
fellow-creatures  who  love  to  be  courted  and  "  lionized,"  than  the  political  exiles 
of  great  name  who  come  to  London  and  do  not  stay  too  long  there. 

Far  away  as  the  days  of  Thaddeus  of  Warsaw  and  the  conventional  and  ro- 
mantic type  of  exile  now  seem,  there  is  still  a  fervent  yearning  in  British  so- 
ciety toward  the  representative  of  any  Continental  nationality  which  happens 
to  be  oppressed.  No  man  had  ever  before  received  such  a  welcome  in  London 
as  Kossuth  did ;  but  Kossuth  stayed  too  long,  became  domesticized  and  famil- 
iarized, and  society  in  London  likes  its  lions  to  be  always  new  and  fresh. 
Moreover,  the  late  Lord  Palmerston,  a  warm  patron  of  exiles  when  the  patronage 
went  no  further  than  an  invitation  to  a  dinner  or  an  evening  party,  set  his  face 
against  Kossuth  from  the  first ;  and  polite  society  soon  took  the  hint. 

The  man  who  most  completely  conquered  all  society,  even  the  very  highest, 
in  London,  during  my  recollection,  was  the  man  who  probably  cared  least  about 
f.t,  and  who  certainly  never  sought  to  win  the  favor  of  fashion — I  mean,  of  course, 
Garibaldi.  To  this  day  I  am  perfectly  unable  to  understand  the  demeanor  of 
the  British  peerage  toward  Garibaldi,  when  he  visited  London  for  a  few  days 


THE  EXILE-WORLD  OF  LONDON.  203 

some  years  ago.  The  thing  was  utterly  unprecedented  and  inexplicable.  The 
Peerage  literally  rushed  at  him.  He  was  beset  by  dukes,  mobbed  by  count- 
esses. He  could  not  by  any  human  possibility  have  so  divided  his  day  as  to  find 
time  for  breakfasting  and  dining  with  one-fifth  of  the  noble  hosts  who  fought 
and  scrambled  for  him.  It  was  a  perpetual  torture  to  his  secretaries  and  pri- 
vate friends  to  decide  between  the  rival  claims  of  a  Prime  Minister  and  a  Prince 
of  the  blood  ;  an  Archbishop  and  a  Duchess  ;  the  Lord  Chancellor  and  the 
leader  of  the  Opposition.  The  Tories  positively  outdid  the  Whigs  in  the  strug- 
gle for  the  society  of  the  simple  seaman,  the  gallant  guerilla.  The  oddest  thing 
about  the  business  was,  that  three  out  of  every  four  of  these  noble  personages 
had  always  previously  spoken  of  Garibaldi — when  they  did  speak  of  him  at  all — 
with  contempt  and  dislike,  as  a  buccaneer  and  a  filibuster. 

What  did  it  mean?  Was  it  a  little  comedy  ?  Was  it  their  fun  ?  Was  it  a  politi- 
cal coup  de  theatre,  to  dodge  the  Radicals  and  the  workingmen  out  of  their  favorite 
hero  ?  Certainly  some-  of  Garibaldi's  friends  suspected  something  of  the  kind, 
and  were  utterly  bewildered  and  confounded  by  the  unexpected  rush  of  aristo- 
cratic admirers,  who  beset  the  hero  from  the  moment  he  touched  the  shore  of 
England. 

It  was  a  strange  sight,  not  easily  to  be  forgotten,  to  see  the  manner  in  which 
Garibaldi  sat  among  the  dukes  and  marchionesses — simple,  sweet,  arrayed  in 
the  calm,  serene  dignity  of  a  manly,  noble  heart.  There  was  something  of 
Oriental  stateliness  in  the  unruffled,  imperturbable,  bland  composure,  with  which 
he  bore  himself  amid  the  throng  of  demonstrative  and  titled  adulators.  I  do  not 
think  he  believed  in  the  sincerity  of  half  of  it,  any  more  than  I  did,  but  he 
showed  no  more  sign  of  distrust  or  impatience  than  he  did  of  gratified  vanity. 

The  thing  ended  in  a  quarrel  between  the  Aristocracy  and  the  Democracy, 
between  Belgravia  and  Clerkenwell,  for  the  custody  of  the  hero,  and  Garibaldi 
escaped  somehow  back  to  his  island  during  the  squabble.  But  I  think  Lady 
Palmerston  let  the  mask  fall  for  a  moment,  when,  growing  angry  at  the  assurance 
of  Garibaldi's  humbler  friends,  and  perhaps  a  little  tired  of  the  whole  business,  she 
told  some  gentlemen  of  my  acquaintance,  that  quite  too  much  work  had  been  made 
about  a  person  who,  after  all,  was  only  a  respectable  brigand.  This  was  said 
(and  it  was  said)  at  the  very  meridian  of  the  day  of  noble  homage  to  the  Emanci- 
pator of  Sicily. 

Garibaldi  has  never  since  returned  to  England.  Should  he  ever  do  so,  he 
will  find  himself  unembarrassed  by  the  attentions  of  the  Windsor  uniform  and 
Order  of  the  Garter.  The  play,  however  it  was  got  up,  or  whatever  its  object, 
was  played  out  long  ago.  But  the  West  End  is,  as  a  rule,  very  fond  of  distin- 
guished exiles,  when  they  come  and  go  quickly ;  and  Lord  Palmerston's  draw- 
ing-room was  seldom  without  a  representative  of  the  class.  No  man  ever  did 
less  for  any  great  cause  than  Lord  Palmerston  did ;  but  he  liked  brilliant  exiles, 
and,  perhaps,  more  particularly  the  soldierly  than  the  scholarly  class.  Such 
a  man  as  the  martial,  dashing,  adventurous  General  Tiirr,  for  example,  was  the 
kind  of  refugee  that  Lord  and  Lady  Palmerston  especially  favored. 

Many  English  peers  have,  indeed,  quite  a  specialite  in  the  way  of  patronizing 
exiles  ;  but,  of  course,  in  all  such  cases  the  exile  must  have  a  name  which  brings 
some  gratifying  distinction  to  his  host.  He  must  be  somebody  worth  pointing 
out  to  the  other  guests.  I  know  that  many  Continental  refugees  have  chafed  at 
all  this,  and  some  have  steadily  held  aloof  from  it,  and  declined  to  be  shown  off 
for  the  admiration  of  a  novelty-hunting  crowd.  Many,  too,  have  been  deceived 
by  it ;  have  mistaken  such  idle  attention  for  profound  and  practical  sympathy,  and 


204 


THE  EXILE-WORLD  OF  LONDON. 


have  thought  that  two  or  three  peers  and  half  a  dozen  aristocratic  petticoats 
could  direct  the  foreign  policy  of  England.  They  have  swelled  with  hope  and 
confidence  ;  have  built  their  plans  and  based  their  organizations  on  the  faith  that 
Park  Lane  meant  the  British  government,  and  that  the  politeness  of  a  Cabinet 
Minister  was  as  good  as  the  assistance  of  a  British  fleet ;  and  have  found  out  what 
idiots  they  were  in  such  a  belief,  and  have  gone  nigh  to  breaking  their  hearts 
accordingly.  Indeed,  the  readiness  of  all  classes  in  England  to  rush  at  any  dis- 
tinguished exile,  and  become  effusive  about  himself  and  his  cause  is  very  often — 
or,  at  least,  used  to  be — a  cruel  kindness,  sure  to  be  misunderstood  and  to  be- 
tray— a  love  that  killed. 

Nothing  could,  in  its  way,  have  been  more  unfortunate  and  calamitous  than 
the  outburst  of  popular  enthusiasm  in  England  about  the  Polish  insurrection 
four  years  ago.  Some  of  the  Polish  leaders  living  in  London  were  com- 
pletely deceived  by  it,  and  finally  believed  that  England  was  about  to  take  up 
arms  in  their  cause.  An  agitation  was  got  up,  outside  the  House  of  Commons, 
by  an  earnest,  well-meaning  gentleman,  who  really  believed  what  he  said  ;  and 
inside  the  House  by  a  bustling,  quickwitted,  political  adventurer,  who  certainly 
ought  not  to  have  believed  what  he  said.  This  latter  gentleman  actually  went  out 
to  Cracow,  in  Austrian  Poland,  and  was  leceived  there  with  wild  demonstrations 
of  welcome  as  a  representative  of  the  national  will  of  England  and  the  precursor 
of  English  intervention.  The  Polish  insurrection  went  on  ;  and  England  wrote 
a  diplomatic  note,  which  Russia  resented  as  a  piece  of  impertinence  ;  and  there 
England's  sympathy  ended.  "  I  think,"  said  a  great  English  Liberal  to  me, 
"that  every  Englishman  who  helped  to  encourage  these  poor  Poles  and  give 
them  hope  of  English  help,  has  Polish  blood  on  his  hands."  I  think  so,  too. 

I  have  always  thought  that  Felice  Orsini  was  in  some  sort  a  victim  to  the 
kind  of  delusion  which  English  popularity  so  easily  fosters.  I  met  Orsini  when 
he  came  to  England,  not  very  long  before  the  unfortunate  and  criminal  attempt 
of  the  Rue  Lepelletier ;  and  I  was  much  taken,  as  most  people  who  met  him 
were,  by  the  simplicity,  sweetness,  and  soldierly  frankness  of  his  demeanor.  He 
delivered  some  lectures  in  London,  Manchester,  Liverpool,  and  other  large 
towns,  on  his  own  personal  adventures — principally  his  escape  from  prison — and 
though  he  had  but  a  moderate  success  as  a  lecturer,  he  was  surrounded  every- 
where by  well-meaning  and  sympathizing  groups,  the  extent  of  whose  influence 
and  the  practical  value  of  whose  sympathy  he  probably  did  not  at  first  quite 
understand.  H*  certainly  had,  at  one  time,  some  vague  hopes  of  obtaining  for 
the  cause  of  Italian  independence  a  substantial  assistance  from  England.  A 
short  experience  cured  him  of  that  dream  ;  and  I  fancy  it  was  then  that  he 
formed  the  resolution  which  he  afterward  attempted  so  desperately  to  carry  out. 
I  think,  from  something  I  heard  him  say  once,  that  Mazzini  had  endeavored  to 
enlighten  him  as  to  the  true  state  of  affairs  in  England,  and  the  real  value  of  the 
sort  of  sympathy  which  London  so  readily  offers  to  any  interesting  exile.  But  I 
do  not  believe  Mazzini's  advice  had  much  influence  over  Orsini.  Indeed,  the  lat- 
ter, at  the  time  I  saw  him,  had  but  little  respect  for  Mazzini.  He  spoke  with 
something  like  contempt  of  the  great  conspirator.  It  would  have  been  well  for 
Orsini  if  he  had,  in  one  thing  at  least,  followed  the  counsels  of  Mazzini.  People 
used  to  say,  some  years  ago,  that  odious  and  desperate  as  Orsini's  attempt  was, 
it  at  least  had  the  merit  of  frightening  Louis  Napoleon  into  active  efforts  on  be- 
half of  Italy.  There  was  so  much  about  Orsini  that  was  worthy  and  noble  that 
one  would  be  glad  to  regard  him  as  even  in  his  crime  the  instrument  of  good  to 
the  country  he  loved  so  well.  But  documentary  and  other  evidence  has  made  it 


THE  EXILE-WORLD  OF  LONDON.  205 

clear  since  Orsini's  death  that  the  negotiations  which  ended  in  Solferino  and 
Villafranca  were  begun  before  Orsini  had  ever  planned  his  murderous  enterprise. 
The  fact  is,  that,  during  the  Crimean  war,  Cavour  first  tried  England  on  the 
subject,  through  easy-going  and  heedless  Lord  Clarendon — who  hardly  took  the 
trouble  to  listen  to  the  audacious  projects  of  his  friend — and  then  turned  to 
France,  where  quicker  and  shrewder  ears  listened  to  what  he  had  to  say. 

I  have  spoken  of  Orsini's  contempt  for  Mazzini.  Such  a  feeling  toward  such 
a  man  seems  quite  inexplicable.  Many  men  detest  Mazzini ;  many  men  distrust 
him  ;  many  look  up  to  him  as  a  prophet,  and  adore  him  as  a  chief;  but  I  am  not 
able  to  understand  how  any  one  can  think  of  him  with  mere  contempt.  For  my- 
self, I  find  it  impossible  to  contemplate  without  sadness  and  without  reverence 
that  noble,  futile  career  ;  that  majestic,  melancholy  dream.  But  it  must  be  owned 
that  an  atmosphere  of  illusion  sheds  itself  around  Mazzini  wherever  he  goes.  I 
believe  the  man  himself  to  be  the  very  soul  of  truth  and  honor;  and  yet  I  pro- 
test I  would  not  take,  on  any  political  question,  the  unsupported  testimony  of 
any  devotee  of  Mazzini  to  any  fact  whatsoever.  Mazzini's  own  faith  is  so  sub- 
limely transcendental,  so  utterly  independent  of  realities  and  of  experience, 
that  I  sincerely  believe  the  visions  of  the  opium-eater  are  hardly  less  to  be  relied 
on  than  the  oracles  and  opinions  of  the  great  Italian.  And  yet  the  force  of  his 
character,  the  commanding  nature  of  his  genius,  are  such  that  his  followers  be- 
come more  Mazzinian  than  Mazzini  himself.  There  is  something  a  good  deal 
provoking  about  the  manner  of  the  minor  followers  of  Mazzini.  I  mean  in 
England.  I  do  not  speak  of  such  men  as  my  friend,  Mr.  Stansfeld,  now  a  Lord 
of  the  Treasury,  or  my  friend,  Mr.  P.  A.  Taylor,  M.  P.  These  are  men  ot  ability 
and  men  of  the  world,  whose  enthusiasm  and  faith,  even  at  their  highest,  are 
under  the  control  of  practical  experience  and  the  discipline  of  public  life.  But  I 
speak  of  the  minor  and  less  responsible  admirers,  the  men  and  women  who  ac- 
cept oracle  as  fact,  aspiration  as  experience,  the  dream  as  the  reality.  The  calm, 
self-satisfied  way  in  which  they  deal  with  contemporary  history,  with  geography, 
with  statistics,  with  possibilities  and  impossibilities,  in  the  hope  of  making  you 
believe  what  they  firmly  believe — that  Italy  could,  if  only  she  had  proclaimed 
herself  Republican,  have  driven  the  Austrians  into  the  sea  in  1859,  and  the 
French  across  the  Alps  in  1860,  while  at  the  same  time  quietly  kicking  Pope, 
Bourbon,  and  Savoy  out  of  throned  existence.  The  confident  and  imperturba- 
ble assurance  with  which  they  can  do  all  this — and  I  have  never  met  with  any 
genuine  devotee  of  Mazzini  who  could  not — is  something  to  make  one  bewildered 
rather  than  merely  impatient.  For  it  is  true  in  politics  as  in  literature  or  in 
fashion,  the  admiring  imitator  reproduces  only  the  defects,  the  weaknesses,  the 
mannerisms  and  mistakes  of  the  original.  Mazzini  himself  is,  I  need  hardly 
say,  a  singularly  modest  and  retiring  man.  While  he  lived  in  London,  he  shrank 
from  all  public  notice,  and  was  seen  only  by  his  friends  and  followers.  He 
sought  out  nobody.  "  Sir,"  said  Mr.  Gladstone,  addressing  the  Speaker  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  one  night,  when  a  fierce  and  factious  attack  was  made  on 
Mr.  Stansfeld  as  a  follower  of  the  great  exile,  "I  never  saw  Signor  Mazzini.' 
Yet  Gladstone  was  by  far  the  most  prominent  and  influential  of  all  the  English 
sympathizers  with  the  cause  of  Italian  liberty.  One  would  have  thought  it  im- 
possible for  such  a  man  as  Mazzini  to  live  for  years  in  the  same  city  with  Glad- 
stone without  the  two  ever  chancing  to  meet.  But  for  the  modest  seclusion  and 
shrinking  way  of  Mazzini,  such  a  thing  would,  indeed,  have  been  impossible. 

Louis  Blanc  is,  perhaps,  the  only  Revolutionary  exile  who,  in  my  time,  has 
oeen  everywhere  and  permanently  popular  in  London  society.     The  fate  of  a 


206  THE  EXILE-WORLD  OF  LONDON. 

political  exile  in  a  place  like  London  usually  is  to  be  a  lion  among  one  clique 
and  a  bete  noir  in  another.  But  Louis  Blanc  has  been  accepted  and  welcomed 
everywhere,  although  he  has  never  compromised  or  concealed  one  iota  of  his 
political  opinions.  I  think  one  explanation,  and,  perhaps,  the  explanation  of  this 
somewhat  remarkable  phenomenon,  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  Louis  Blanc 
never  for  an  hour  played  the  part  of  a  conspirator.  He  seems  to  have  honora- 
bly construed  his  place  in  English  society  to  be  that  of  one  to  whom  a  shelter 
had  been  given,  and  who  was  bound  not  to  make  any  use  of  that  shelter  which 
could  embarrass  his  host.  In  London  he  ceased  to  be  an  active  politician.  He 
refused  to  exhibit  himself  en  victime.  He  appealed  to  no  public  pity.  He  made 
no  parade  of  defeat  and  exile.  He  went  to  work  steadily  as  a  literary  man,  and 
he  had  the  courage  to  be  poor.  When  he  appeared  in  public  it  was  simply  as  a 
literary  lecturer.  He  was  not  very  successful  in  that  capacity.  At  least,  he  was 
not  what  the  secretary  of  a  lyceum  would  call  a  success.  He  gave  a  series  of  lec- 
tures on  certain  phases  of  society  in  Paris  before  the  great  Revolution,  and  they 
were  attended  by  all  the  best  literary  men  in  London,  who  were,  I  think,  unani- 
mous in  their  admiration  of  the  power,  the  eloquence,  the  brilliancy  which  these 
pictures  of  a  ghastly  past  displayed.  But  the  general  public  cared  nothing  about 
the  salons  where  wit,  and  levity,  and  wickedness  prepared  the  way  for  revolu- 
tion ;  and  I  heard  Louis  Blanc  pour  out  an  apologia  (I  don't  mean  an  apology) 
for  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  in  language  of  noble  eloquence,  and  with  dramatic 
effect  worthy  of  a  great  orator,  in  a  small  lecture-room,  of  which  three-fourths 
of  the  space  was  empty.  Since  that  time  he  has  delivered  lectures  occasionally 
at  the  request  of  mechanics'  institutions  and  such  societies  ;  but  he  has  not  es- 
sayed a  course  of  lectures  on  his  own  account.  Everyone  knows  him  ;  every- 
one likes  him  ;  everyone  admires  his  manly,  modest  character  and  his  uncom- 
promising Republicanism.  Lately  he  has  lived  more  in  Brighton  than  in  Lon- 
don ;  but  wherever  in  England  he  happens  to  be,  he  lives  always  as  a  simple 
citizen  ;  has  never  been  raved  about  like  Kossuth,  or  denounced  like  Mazzini ; 
and  has  occupied  himself  wholly  with  his  historical  labors  and  his  letters  to  a 
Paris  newspaper. 

Another  exile  of  distinction  who  lived  for  years  in  London  apart  from  poli- 
tics and  heedless  of  popular  favor  was  Ferdinand  Freiligrath,  the  German  poet. 
Freiligrath  had  to  leave  Prussia  because  of  his  political  poems  and  writings. 
He  had  undergone  one  prosecution  and  escaped  conviction,  but  Prussia  was 
not  then  (twenty  years  ago)  a  country  in  which  to  run  such  risks  too  often.  So 
Freiligrath  went  to  Amsterdam  and  thence  to  London.  He  lived  in  London  for 
many  years,  and  acted  as  manager  of  a  Swiss  banking-house.  His  life  was  one 
of  entire  seclusion  from  political  schemes  or  agitations.  He  did  not  even,  like 
his  countryman  and  friend,  Gottfried  Kinkel,  take  any  part  in  public  movements 
among  the  Germans  in  London — and  he  certainly  never  went  about  society  and 
the  newspapers  blowing  his  own  trumpet,  and  keeping  his  name  always  promi- 
nent, like  the  egotistical  and  inflated  Karl  Blind.  Indeed,  so  complete  was 
Freiligrath's  retirement  that  many  Englishmen  living  in  London,  who  delighted 
in  some  of  his  poems — his  exquisite,  fanciful,  melodious  "  Sand  Songs  "  his 
glowing  Desert  poems,  his  dreamy,  delightful  songs  of  the  sea,  and  his  buining 
political  ballads — were  quite  amazed  to  find  that  the  poet  himself-  had  been  a 
resident  of  their  own  city  for  nearly  half  a  lifetime.  Freiligrath  has  now  at  last 
returned  to  his  own  country.  His  countrymen  invited  him  home,  and  raised  a 
national  tribute  to  enable  him  to  give  up  his  London  engagement  and  with- 
draw altogether  from  a  life  of  mere  business.  In  a  letter  I  lately  received  frorr. 


THE  EXILE-WORLD  OF  LONDON.  207 

Freiligrath's  daughter  (a  young  lady  of  great  talent  and  accomplishments,  re- 
cently married  in  London),  I  find  it  mentioned  that  Freiligrath  expected  soon  to 
receive  a  visit  from  Longfellow  in  Germany — the  first  meeting  of  these  two  old 
friends  for  a  period  of  some  five-and-twenty  years. 

Alexander  Herzen,  the  famous  Russian  exile,  the  wittiest  of  men,  endowed 
with  the  sharpest  tongue  and  the  best  nature,  has  left  us.  For  many  years  he 
lived  in  London  and  published  his  celebrated  Kolokol — "The  Bell,"  which  rang 
so  ominously  and  jarringly  in  the  ears  of  Russian  autocracy.  He  has  now  set  up 
his  staff  in  Geneva,  a  little  London  in  its  attractiveness  to  exiles  ;  and  his  ar- 
rowy, flashing  wit  gleams  no  longer  across  the  foreign  world  of  the  English  me- 
tropolis. I  do  not  know  how  long  Herzen  had  lived  in  London,  but  I  fancy  the 
difficulties  of  the  English  language  must  have  proved  insurmountable  to  him — a 
strange  phenomenon  in  the  case  of  a  Russian.  Certainly  he  never,  so  far  as  I 
am  aware,  either  spoke  or  wrote  English. 

The  latest  exile  of  great  mark  whom  we  had  among  us  in  London  was  Gen- 
eral Prim.  When  his  attempt  at  revolution  in  Spain  failed  some  two  years  ago, 
Prim  went  into  Belgium.  There  some  pressure  was  brought  to  bear  upon  him 
by  the  Ministry,  in  consequence,  no  doubt,  of  certain  pressure  brought  to  bear 
by  France,  and  Prim  left  Brussels  and  came  to  live  in  London.  He  lived  very 
quietly,  made  no  show  of  himself  in  any  way,  and  was  no  doubt  hard  at  work 
all  the  time  making  preparation  for  what  has  since  come  to  pass.  To  all  ap- 
pearance he  had  an  easy  and  careless  sort  of  life,  living  out  among  his  private 
friends,  going  to  the  races  and  going  to  the  opera.  But  he  was  incessantly  plan- 
ning and  preparing ;  and  he  told  many  Englishmen  candidly  what  he  was  pre- 
paring for.  There  were  many  men  in  London  who  were  looking  out  for  the 
Spanish  Revolution  months  before  it  came,  on  the  faith  of  Prim's  earnest  as- 
surances that  it  was  coming.  So  much 'has  of  late  been  written  about  Prim 
that  his  personal  appearance  and  manner  must  be  familiar  to  most  readers  of 
newspapers  and  magazines.  I  need  only  say  that  there  is  in  private  much  less 
of  the  militaire  about  him  than  one  who  had  not  actually  met  him  would  be  in- 
clined to  imagine.  He  is  small,  neat,  and  even  elegant  in  dress,  very  quiet  and 
perhaps  somewhat  languid  in  manner,  looking  wonderfully  young  for  hrs  years, 
and  without  the  slightest  tinge  of  the  Leicester  square  foreigner  about  him.  He  is 
rather  the  foreigner  of  Regent  street  and  the  stalls  of  the  opera  house — any 
one  who  knows  London  will  at  once  understand  the  difference.  Prim  impressed 
me  with  a  much  greater  respect  for  his  intellect,  even  from  a  literary  man's 
point  of  view,  than  I  had  had  before  meeting  and  conversing  with  him.  I  think 
those  who  regard  him  as  a  mere  sabreur,  the  ordinary  Spanish  leader  of  a  suc- 
cessful military  revolution,  are  mistaken.  His  animated  and  epigrammatic  con- 
versation seemed  to  me  to  be  inspired  and  guided  by  an  intellectual  depth  and  a 
power  of  observation  and  reflection  such  as  I  at  least  was  not  prepared  to  find 
in  the  dashing  soldier  of  the  Moorish  campaign. 

There  is  one  class  of  the  obscure  exiles,  different  from  both  the  favored  and 
the  poorest,  whose  existence  has  often  puzzled  me.  A  political  question  of  mo- 
ment begins  to  disturb  the  European  continent.  Immediately  there  turns  up  in 
London,  and  presents  himself  at  your  door  (supposing  you  are  a  journalist  with 
acknowledged  sympathies  for  this  or  that  side  of  the  question)  a  mysterious 
and  generally  shabby-looking  personage,  who  professes  to  know  all  about  it,  and 
volunteers  to  supply  you  with  the  most  authentic  information  and  the  most 
trustworthy  "appreciation"  of  anv  events  that  may  transpire.  He  wants  no 
money  ;  his  information  is  given  for  the  sake  of  "the  cause."  You  ask  for  ere- 


208  THE  EXILE-WORLD  OF  LONDON. 

dentials,  and  he  produces  recommendations  which  quite  satisfy  you  that  his  ob- 
jects are  genuine,  although,  oddly  enough,  the  persons  who  recommend  him  do 
not  seem  to  have  anything  whatever  to  do  with  the  cause  he  represents.  He 
comes,  for  example,  to  talk  about  the  affairs  of  Roumania,  and  he  brings  letters 
and  vouchers  from  literary  friends  in  Paris.  He  professes  to  be  an  emissary 
from  the  Cretans,  and  his  recommendations  are  from  a  Manchester  cotton-firm. 
Anyhow,  you  are  satisfied  ;  you  ask  no  explanations  ;  you  assume  that  yout 
Paris  or  Manchester  friends  have  enlarged  the  sphere  of  their  sympathies  since 
you  saw  them  last,  and  you  repose  confidence  in  your  new  acquaintance.  You 
are  right.  He  brings  you  information,  the  most  rapid,  the  most  surprising,  the 
most  accurate.  Such  a  man  I  knew  during  the  Schleswig-Holstein  agitation, 
which  ended  in  the  Danish  war  of  four  years  since.  He  was  a  Prussian — a 
waif  of  the  Berlin  rising  of  1848.  Was  he  in  the  confidence  of  Von  Beust,  and 
Bismarck,  and  Palmerston,  and  all  the  rest  of  them  ?  I  venture  to  doubt  it ;  yet 
if  he  had  been,  he  could  hardly  have  been  more  quick  and  accurate  in  all  the  in- 
formation he  brought  me.  Evening  after  evening  he  brought  a  regular  minute 
of  the  proceedings  of  the  day  at  the  Conference  of  London,  which  was  sitting 
with  closed  doors,  and  pledged  to  profoundest  secrecy.  Perhaps  this  was 
only  guesswork  !  Here  is  one  illustration.  The  Conference  was  held  because 
some  of  the  European  Great  Powers,  England  and  France  especially,  desired  to 
save  Denmark  from  a  struggle  against  the  immeasurably  superior  force  of  Prus- 
sia and  Austria.  A  certain  proposal  was  to  be  made  to  the  Conference  by  Eng- 
land and  France  on  the  part  of  Denmark.  So  much  we  all  knew.  One  evening 
my  friend  came  to  me,  and  bade  me  announce  to  the  world  that  the  proposal  had 
been  made  that  day,  and  indignantly  rejected — by  Denmark  !  The  story  seemed 
preposterous,  but  I  relied  on  my  friend.  Next  day  I  was  laughed  at ;  my  news 
was  denounced  and  repudiated.  The  day  after  it  was  proved  to  be  true — and 
Denmark  went  to  war. 

The  last  time  I  saw  my  friend  was  in  the  spring  of  1866.  He  came  to  tell 
me  that  Prussia  had  resolved — at  least  that  Bismarck  had  resolved — on  war 
with  Austria.  "Stick  to  that  statement,"  he  said,  "whatever  anybody  may  say 
to  the  contrary — unless  Bismarck  resigns."  I  took  his  advice.  At  this  time  I 
am  convinced  that  the  English  government  had  not  the  least  idea  that  a  war  was 
really  coming.  The  war  came  ;  but  I  never  saw  my  friend  any  more. 

Another  of  my  mysterious  acquaintances  was  an  old,  white-haired,  grave,  pla- 
cid man  who  turned  up  in  London  during  the  early  part  of  the  French  occupa- 
tion of  Mexico.  He  was  a  passionate  Republican  and  anti-Bonapartist.  He 
was  a  friend  and  apparently  a  confidant  of  Juarez,  and  was  thoroughly  identified 
with  the  interests  of  the  Republicans  in  Mexico,  although  himself  a  Frenchman. 
I  doubt  whether  I  have  ever  met  with  a  finer  specimen  of  the  courtly  old  gentle- 
man, the  class  now  beginning  to  disappear  even  in  France,  than  this  mysterious 
friend  of  the  Mexican  Republic.  He  might  have  been  fresh  from  the  Faubourg 
St.  Germain,  such  was  the  grave,  dignified,  and  somewhat  melancholy  grace  of  his 
courtly  bearing.  Yet  he  had  evidently  lived  long  in  Mexico,  and  he  was  an 
ardent  Republican  of  the  red  tinge ;  there  was  something  of  the  old  militaire 
about  him,  too,  which  lent  a  certain  strength  to  his  bland  and  placid  demeanor. 
I  never  quite  knew  what  he  was  doing  in  London.  He  was  not  what  is  called 
an  "unofficial  representative "  of  Juarez  (at  this  time  diplomatic  relations  be- 
tween England  and  Mexico  were  of  course  broken  off)  for  he  never  seemed  to 
go  near  any  of  our  ministers  or  diplomatists,  and  his  only  object  appeared  to  be 
to  supply  accurate  information  to  one  or  two  Liberal  journals  which  he  believed 


THE  EXILE-WORLD  OF  LONDON.  '209 

to  be  honestly  inclined  toward  the  right  side  of  every  question.  His  information 
was  always  accurate,  his  estimate  of  a  critical  situation  was  always  justified  by 
further  knowledge  and  the  progress  of  events,  his  predictions  always  came  true. 
He  looked  like  a  poor  man,  indeed,  like  a  needy  man  ;  yet  he  never  seemed  to 
want  for  money,  and  he  neither  sought  nor  would  have  any  compensation  for  the 
constant  and  valuable  information  he  afforded.  His  knowledge  of  European 
and  American  politics  was  profound  ;  and  though  he  spoke  not  one  word  of  Eng- 
lish he  seemed  to  understand  all  the  daily  details  of  our  English  political  life. 
He  was  a  constant  visitor  to  me  (always  at  night  and  late)  during  the  progress 
of  the  Mexican  struggle.  When  the  Mexican  Empire  was  nearly  played  out  he 
came  and  told  me  the  end  was  very,  very  near,  and  that  in  the  event  of  Maxi- 
milian's being  captured  it  would  be  impossible  for  Juarez  to  spare  his  life.  He 
did  not  tell  me  that  he  was  at  once  returning  to  Mexico,  but  I  presume  that  he 
did  immediately  return,  for  that  was  the  last  I  saw  or  heard  of  him. 

During  the  quarrels  between  the  Prussian  Representative  Chamber  and 
Count  von  Bismarck  (before  the  triumph  of  Sadowa  had  condoned  for  the  of- 
fences of  the  great  despotic  Minister),  I  had  a  visit,  one  night,  from  a  mysterious, 
seedy,  snuffy  old  German.  He  came,  he  said,  to  develop  a  grand  plan  for  the 
extinction  of  the  Junker  or  Feudal  party.  Why  he  came  to  develop  it  to  me  I 
do  not  know,  as  it  will  presently  be  seen  that  I  could  hardly  render  it  any  prac- 
tical assistance.  It  was,  like  all  grand  schemes,  remarkably  simple  in  its  na- 
ture. Indeed,  it  was  literally  and  strictly  Captain  Bobadil's  immortal  plan  ; 
although  my  German  visitor  indignantly  repudiated  the  supposition  that  he  had 
borrowed  it,  and  declared,  I  believe,  with  perfect  truth,  that  he  had  never  heard 
of  Captain  Bobadil  before.  The  plan  was  simply  that  a  society  should  be 
formed  of  young  and  devoted  Germans  who  should  occupy  themselves  in  chal- 
lenging and  killing  off,  one  by  one,  the  whole  Junker  party.  My  friend  made  his 
calculations  very  calmly,  and  he  did  not  foolishly  or  arrogantly  assume  that  the 
swordsmanship  of  his  party  must  needs  be  always  superior  to  that  of  their  adver- 
saries. No  ;  he  counted  that  there  would  be  a  certain  number  of  victims  amonj» 
his  Liberal  heroes,  and  made,  indeed,  a  large  allowance,  left  a  broad  margin  for 
such  losses.  But  this,  in  no  wise  affected  the  success  of  his  plan.  The  Liber- 
als, were  many,  the  Junkers  few.  It  would  simply  be  a  matter  of  time  and  calcu- 
lation. Numbers  must  tell  in  the  end.  A  day  must  come  when  the  last  Junker 
would  fall  to  earth — and  then  Astrea  would  return.  Now  the  man  who  talked 
in  this  way  was  no  lunatic.  He  had  nothing  about  him,  except  his  plan,  which 
denoted  mental  aberration.  His  scheme  apart,  he  was  as  steady  and  prosy  an 
old  German  as  you  could  meet  under  the  lindens  of  Berlin  or  on  the  Luther- 
platz  of  Konigsberg.  He  was,  moreover,  as  earnest,  argumentative,  and  pro- 
foundly wearisome  over  his  project  as  if  he  were  expounding  to  an  admiring 
class  of  students  the  relations  of  the  Ego  and  Non-Ego.  I  need  hardly  add 
that  one  single  beam,  even  the  faintest,  of  a  sense  of  the  ridiculous,  never  shone 
in  upon  him  during  his  long  and  eloquent  exposition  of  the  patriotic  virtue,  the 
completeness  and  the  mathematical  certainty  of  his  ingenious  project. 

Let  me  close  my  random  reminiscences  with  one  recollection  of  a  sadder 
nature.  Some  three  or  four  years  ago  there  came  to  London  from  Naples  an 
Italian  of  high  education  and  character — a  lawyer  by  profession ;  a  passionate 
devotee  of  Italian  unity,  and  filled  naturally  with  a  hatred  of  the  expelled  Bour- 
bons. This  gentleman  had  discovered  in  one  of  the  Neapolitan  prisons  a  num- 
ber of  instruments  of  torture — rusty,  hideous  old  iron  chairs,  and  racks,  and 
screws,  and  "  cages  of  silence,"  and  such  other  contrivances.  He  became  the 


210  THE  EXILE-WORLD  OF  LONDON. 

possessor  of  these,  and  he  obtained  from  the  new  government  a  certificate  of  the 
genuineness  of  his  treasure-trove — that  is  to  say,  a  certificate  that  the  things 
were  actually  found  in  the  place  where  the  owner  professed  to  have  found  them. 
The  Italian  authorities,  of  course,  could  say  nothing  as  to  whether  they  had  or 
had  not  been  used  as  instruments  of  torture  in  any  modern  reign.  They  may 
have  lain  rusting  there  since  hideous  old  days  when  the  Inquisition  was  a  fash- 
ionable institution  ;  they  may  have  been  used — public  opinion  and  Mr.  Gladstone 
said  things  as  horrible  had  been  done — in  the  blessed  reign  of  good  King  Bom- 
ba.  The  Neapolitan  lawyer  firmly  believed  that  they  had  been  so  used  ;  and  he 
became  inspired  with  the  idea  that  to  take  these  instruments,  first  to  London 
and  then  to  the  United  States,  and  exhibit  them,  and  lecture  on  them,  would 
arouse  such  a  tempest  of  righteous  indignation  among  all  peoples,  free  or  en- 
slaved, as  must  sweep  kingcraft  and  priestcraft  off  the  earth.  This  idea  became 
a  faith  with  him.  He  brought  his  treasure  of  rusty  iron  to  London,  and  pro- 
posed to  take  a  great  hall  and  begin  the  work  of  his  mission.  I  endeavored  to 
dissuade  him  (he  had  brought  some  introductions  to  me).  I  told  him  frankly 
that,  just  at  that  time,  public  opinion  in  London  was  utterly  indifferent  to  the 
Bourbons.  The  fervor  of  interest  about  the  Neapolitan  Revolution  had  gone 
by  ;  people  were  tired  of  Italy,  and  wanted  something  new;  the  Polish  insurrec- 
tion was  going  on  ;  the  great  American  Civil  War  was  occupying  public  atten- 
tion ;  London  audiences  cared  no  more  about  the  crimes  of  the  Bourbons  than 
about  the  crimes  of  the  Borgias.  He  was  not  to  be  dissuaded.  He  really  be- 
lieved at  first  that  he  could  induce  some  great  English  orator,  Gladstone  or 
Bright,  to  deliver  lectures  on  those  instruments  and  the  guilt  of  the  system 
which  employed  them.  Then  he  became  more  moderate,  and  applied  to  this  and 
that  professional  lecturer — in  vain.  No  one  would  have  anything  to  do  with  a 
project  so  obviously  doomed  to  failure — he  himself  spoke  no  English.  At  last 
he  induced  a  lady  who  was  somewhat  ambitious  of  a  public  career,  to  lecture  for 
him  ;  and  he  took  a  great  hall  for  a  series  of  nights,  and  advertised  largely,  and 
went  to  great  expense.  I  believe  he  staked  all  he  had  in  money  or  credit  on  the 
success  of  the  enterprise;  and  the  making  of  money  was  not  his  object;  he 
would  have  cheerfully  given  all  he  had  to  create  a  flame  of  public  indignation 
against  despotism.  Need  I  say  what  a  failure  the  enterprise  was  ?  The  Lon- 
don public  never  manifested  the  slightest  interest  in  the  exhibition.  The  lec- 
ture-hall was  empty.  I  believe  the  poor  Neapolitan  tried  again  and  again.  The 
public  would  not  come,  or  look,  or  listen.  He  spent  his  money  in  vain  ;  he  got 
into  debt  in  vain.  His  instruments  of  torture  must  have  inflicted  on  their  owner 
afonies  enough  to  have  satisfied  Maniscalco  or  Carafa.  At  last  he  could  bear 

O  " 

it  no  longer.  He  wrote  a  few  short  letters  to  some  friends  (I  have  still  tha; 
which  I  received — a  melancholy  memorial),  simply  thanking  them  for  what  efforts 
they  had  made  to  assist  him  in  his  object,  acknowledging  that  he  had  been  over 
sanguine,  and  intimating  that  he  had  now  given  up  the  enterprise.  Nothing 
more  was  said  or  hinted.  A  day  or  two  after,  he  locked  himself  up  in  his  room. 
c>omebody  heard  an  explosion,  but  took  no  particular  notice.  The  lady  who  had 
endeavored  to  give  voice  to  my  poor  friend's  scheme  came,  later  in  the  day,  to 
see  him.  The  door  was  broken  open — and  the  poor  Neapolitan  lav  dead,  a  pis- 
tol still  in  his  hand,  a  pistol  bullet  in  his  brain. 


THE  REraREND  CHARLES  KINGSLEY. 

IWOXDER  how  many  of  the  rising  generation  in  America  or  in  England 
have  read  "  Alton  Locke  "  ?  Many  years  have  passed  since  I  read  or 
even  saw  it.  I  do  not  care  to  read  it  any  more,  for  I  fear  that  it  would  not 
now  sustain  the  effect  of  the  impression  it  once  produced  on  me,  and  I  do  not 
desire  to  destroy  or  even  to  weaken  that  impression.  I  know  the  book  is  not 
a  great  work  of  art.  I  know  that  three-fourths  of  its  value  consists  in  its  blind 
and  earnest  feeling;  that  the  story  is  heavily  constructed,  that  many  of  the 
details  are  extravagant  exaggerations,  and  that  the  author  after  all  was  not  in 
the  least  a  democrat  or  a  believer  in  human  equality.  I  have  not  forgotten 
that  even  then,  when  he  braved  respectable  public  opinion  by  taking  a  tailor 
for  his  hero,  he  took  good  care  that  the  tailor  should  have  genteel  relations. 
Still  I  retain  the  impression  which  the  book  once  produced,  and  I  do  not  care 
to  have  it  disturbed.  Therefore  I  do  not  read  or  criticise  "Alton  Locke  "  any 
more ;  I  remember  it  only  as  it  struck  me  long  ago — as  a  generous  protest 
against  the  brutal  indifference,  literary  and  political,  which  left  the  London 
artisan  so  long  to  toil  and  suffer  and  sicken,  to  run  into  debt,  to  drink  and  fight 
and  pine  and  die,  in  the  darkness.  Is  it  necessary — perhaps  it  is — to  explain 
to  some  of  my  readers  the  story  of  "  Alton  Locke  "  ?  It  is  the  story  of  a  young 
London  tailor-boy  who  has  instincts  and  aspirations  far  above  his  class ;  who 
yearns  to  be  a  poet  and  a  patriot ;  who  loves  and  struggles  in  vain ;  who  is 
supposed  to  sum  up  in  his  own  weakly  body  all  the  best  emotions,  the  vainest 
pin  ings,  the  wildest  wishes,  the  most  righteous  protests  of  his  fellows;  who 
joins  with  the  Chartist  movement  for  lack  of  a  better  way  to  the  great  end,  and 
sees  its  failure,  and  himself  utterly  broken  down  goes  out  to  America  to  seek  a 
new  life  there,  and  only  beholds  the  shore  of  the  promised  land  to  die.  Here 
at  least  was  a  grand  idea.  Here  was  the  motive  of  a  prose  epic  that  ought  to  have 
been  more  thrilling  to  modern  ears  than  the  song  of  Tasso.  The  efiect  of  the 
work  at  the  time  was  strengthened  by  the  fact  that  the  author  was  a  clergyman 
of  the  Church  of  England,  who  was  believed  to  be  a  man  of  aristocratic  family 
and  connections.  The  book  was  undoubtedly  a  great  success  in  its  day.  The 
strong  idea  which  was  in  the  heart  of  it  carried  it  along.  The  Rev.  Charles 
Kingsley  became  suddenly  famous. 

"  Alton  Locke  "  was  published  more  than  twenty  years  ago.  Then  Charles 
Kingsley  was  to  most  boys  in  Great  Britain  who  read  books  at  all  a  sort  of  liv- 
ing embodiment  of  chivalry,  liberty,  and  a  revolt  against  the  established  order 
of  baseness  and  class-oppression  in  so  many  spheres  of  our  society.  The  au- 
thor of  "  Alton  Locke"  about  the  same  time  delivered  a  sermon  in  the  country 
church  where  he  officiated,  so  full  of  warm  and  passionate  protest  against  the 
wrongs  done  to  the  poor  by  existing  systems,  that  his  spiritual  chief,  the  rector 
or  dean  or  some  other  dignitary,  arose  in  the  church  itself — morally  and  physi- 
cally arose,  as  Mrs.  Gamp  did — and  denounced  the  preacher.  Need  it  be  said 
that  the  report  of  so  unusual  and  extraordinary  a  scene  as  this  excited  our 
youthful  enthusiasm  into  a  perfect  flame  for  the  minister  of  the  State  Church 
who  had  braved  the  public  censure  of  his  superior  in  the  cause  of  human  right? 
For  a  long  time  Charles  Kingsley  was  our  chosen  hero — I  am  speaking  now 
of  young  men  with  the  youthful  spirit  of  revolt  in  them,  with  dreams  of  repub- 


212  THE  REVEREND  CHARLES  KINGSLEY. 

lies  and  ideas  about  the  equality  of  man.  If  I  were  to  be  asked  to  describe 
Charles  Kingsley  now,  having  regard  to  the  tendency  of  his  writings  and  his 
public  attitude,  how  should  I  speak  of  him  ?  First,  as  about  the  most  perverse 
and  wrong-headed  supporter  of  every  political  abuse,  the  most  dogmatic 
champion  of  every  wrong  cause  in  domestic  and  foreign  politics,  that  even  a 
State  Church  has  for  many  years  produced.  I  hardly  remember,  in  my  prac- 
tical observation  of  politics,  a  great  public  question  but  Charles  Kingsley  was 
at  the  wrong  side  of  it.  The  vulgar  glorification  of  mere  strength  and  power, 
such  a  disgraceful  characteristic  of  modern  public  opinion,  never  had  a  louder- 
tongued  votary  than  he.  The  apostle  of  liberty  and  equality,  as  he  seemed  to  me 
in  my  early  days,  has  of  late  only  shown  himself  to  my  mind  as  the  champion 
of  slave-systems  of  oppression  and  the  h'on  reign  of  mere  force.  Is  this  a  para- 
dox? Has  the  man  undergone  a  wonderful  change  of  opinions?  It  is  not  a 
paradox,  and  I  think  Charles  Kingsley  has  not  changed  his  views.  Perhaps  a 
short  sketch  of  the  man  and  his  work  may  reconcile  these  seeming  antago- 
nisms and  make  the  reality  coherent  and  clear. 

I  was  present  at  a  meeting  not  long  since  where  Mr.  Kingsley  was  one  of 
the  principal  speakers.  The  meeting  was  held  in  London,  the  audience  was  a 
peculiarly  Cockney  audience,  and  Charles  Kingsley  is  personally  little  known 
to  the  public  of  the  metropolis.  Therefore  when  he  began  to  speak  there  was 
quite  a  little  thrill  of  wonder  and  something  like  incredulity  through  the  lis- 
tening benches.  Could  that,  people  near  me  asked,  really  be  Charles  Kings- 
ley,  the  novelist,  the  poet,  the  scholar,  the  aristocrat,  the  gentleman,  the  pul- 
pit-orator, the  "  soldier- priest,"  the  apostle  of  muscular  Christianity?  Yes, 
that  was  indeed  he.  Rather  tall,  very  angular,  surprisingly  awkward,  with 
thin,  staggering  legs,  a  hatchet  face  adorned  with  scraggy  gray  whiskers,  a 
faculty  for  falling  into  the  most  ungainly  attitudes,  and  making  the  most 
hideous  contortions  of  visage  and  frame;  with  a  rough  provincial  accent  and 
an  uncouth  way  of  speaking,  which  would  be  set  down  for  absurd  caricature 
on  the  boards  of  a  comic  theatre;  such  was  the  appearance  which  the  author 
of  "Glaucus"  and  "Hypatia"  presented  to  his  startled  audience.  Since 
Brougham's  time  nothing  so  ungainly,  odd,  and  ludicrous  had  been  displayed 
upon  an  English  platform.  Needless  to  say,  Charles  Kingsley  has  not  the 
eloquence  of  Brougham.  But  he  has  a  robust  and  energetic  plain-speaking 
which  soon  struck  home  to  the  heart  of  the  meeting.  He  conquered  his  au- 
dience. Those  who  at  first  could  hardly  keep  from  laughing;  those  who,  not 
knowing  the  speaker,  wondered  whether  he  was  not  mad  or  in  liquor;  those 
\\rho  heartily  disliked  his  general  principles  and  his  public  attitude,  were  alike 
won  over,  long  before  he  had  finished,  by  his  bluff  and  blunt  earnestness  and 
his  transparent  sincerity.  The  subject  was  one  which  concerned  the  social  suf- 
fering of  the  poor.  Mr.  Kingsley  approached  it  broadly  and  boldly,  talking 
with  a  grand  disregard  for  logic  and  political  economy,  sometimes  startling 
the  more  squeamish  of  his  audience  by  the  Biblical  frankness  of  his  descrip- 
tions and  his  language,  but,  I  think,  convincing  every  one  that  he  was  sound 
at  heart,  and  explaining  unconsciously  to  many  how  it  happened  that  one  en- 
dowed with  sympathies  so  humane  and  liberal  should  so  often  have  distinguished 
himself  as  the  champion  of  the  stupidest  systems  and  the  harshest  oppres- 
sions. Anybody  could  see  that  the  strong  impelling  force  of  the  speaker's 
character  was  an  emotional  one;  that  sympathy  and  not  reason,  feeling  rather 
than  logic,  instinct  rather  than  observation,  would  govern  his  utterances. 
There  are  men  in  whom,  no  matter  how  robust  and  masculine  their  personal 
character,  a  disproportionate  amount  of  the  feminine  element  seems  to  have 


THE  REVEREND  CHARLES  KINGSLEY.  21 3 

somehow  found  a  place.  These  men  will  usually  see  things  not  as  they  really 
are,  but  as  they  are  reflected  through  some  personal  prejudice  or  emotion. 
They  will  generall}-  spring  to  conclusions,  obey  sudden  impulses  and  instincts, 
ignore  evidence  and  be  very  "thorough"  and  sweeping  in  all  their  judgment*-. 
When  they  are  right  they  are — like  the  young  lady  in  the  song — very,  very  good ; 
but  like  her,  too,  when  they  happen  to  be  wrong  they  are  "  horrid."  Of  these 
men  the  author  of  "Alton  Locke"  is  a  remarkable  illustration.  It  seems  odd 
to  describe  the  expounder  of  the  creed  of  Muscular  Christianity  as  one  endowed 
with  too  much  of  the  feminine  element.  But  for  all  his  vigor  of  speech  and 
his  rough  voice,  Mr.  Charles  Kingsley  is  as  surely  feminine  in  his  way  of  rea- 
soning, his  likes  and  dislikes,  his  impulses  and  his  prejudices,  as  Harriet  Mar- 
tineau  is  masculine  in  her  intellect  and  George  Sand  in  her  emotions. 

Mr.  Charles  Kingsley  is  a  man  of  ancient  English  family,  very  proud  of  his 
descent,  and  full  of  the  conviction  so  ostentatiously  paraded  by  many  English- 
men, that  good  blood  carries  with  it  a  warrant  for  bravery,  justice,  and  truth. 
The  Kingsleys  are  a  Cheshire  family;  I  believe  they  date  from  before  the 
Conquest — it  does  not  much'  matter.  I  shall  not  apply  to  them  John  Bright's 
epigram  about  families  which  came  over  with  William  the  Conqueror  and 
never  did  anything  else;  for  the  Kingsleys  seem  to  have  been  always  an  ac- 
tive race.  They  took  an  energetic  part  in  the  civil  war  during  Charles  the 
First's  time,  and  stood  by  the  Parliament.  I  am  told  that  the  family  have  still 
in  their  possession  a  commission  to  raise  a  troop  of  horse,  given  to  a  Kingsley 
and  signed  by  Oliver  Cromwell.  One  of  the  family  emigrated  to  the  New 
World  with  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  and  I  believe  the  Kingsley  line  still  flourishes 
there  like  a  bay-tree.  Irrepressible  energy,  so  far  as  I  know,  seems  to  have 
always  been  a  characteristic  of  the  household.  Charles  Kingsley  was  born 
near  Dartmouth,  in  Devonshire ;  every  one  who  has  read  his  books  must  know 
how  he  revels  in  descriptions  of  the  lovely  scenery  of  Devon.  He  was  for  a 
while  a  pupil  of  the  Rev.  Derwent  Coleridge,  son  of  the  poet,  and  he  finally 
studied  at  Magdalene  College,  Cambridge.  Mr.  Kingsley  was  originally  in- 
tended for  the  legal  profession,  but  he  changed  his  mind  and  went  into  the  church. 
He  was  first  curate  and  soon  after  rector  of  the  Hampshire  parish  of  Eversley, 
the  name  of  which  has  since  been  so  constantly  kept  in  association  with  his 
own.  I  may  mention  that  Mr.  Kingsley  married  one  of  a  trio  of  sisters — the 
Misses  Grenfell — a  second  of  whom  was  afterwards  married  to  Mr.  Froude,  and 
is  since  dead,  while  the  third  became  the  wife  of  one  of  the  foremost  English 
journalists.  Passing  away  from  these  merely  personal  facts,  barely  worth  a 
brief  note,  we  shall  find  that  Kingsley's  real  existence,  if  I  may  use  such  a 
phrase,  began  and  developed  under  the  guidance  of  a  remarkable  man  and 
under  the  inspiration  of  a  strange  movement.  The  man  to  whose  leadership 
and  teaching  Mr.  Kingsley  owed  so  much  was  the  Rev.  Frederick  Denison 
Maurice,  who  died  in  the  first  week  of  last  April. 

It  would  not  be  easy  to  explain  to  an  American  reader  the  meaning  and 
the  extent  of  the  influence  which  this  eminent  man  exercised  over  a  large  field 
of  English  society.  The  life  of  Mr.  Maurice  contains  nothing  worthy  of  note 
as  to  facts  and  dates ;  but  its  spirit  infused  new  soul  and  sense  into  a  whole 
generation.  He  was  not  a  great  speaker  or  a  great  thinker;  he  was  not  a 
bold  reformer;  he  had  not  a  very  subtle  intellect;  I  doubt  whether  his  writ- 
ings will  be  much  read  in  coming  time.  He  was  simply  a  great  character,  a 
grand  influence.  He  sent  a  new  life  into  the  languid  and  decaying  frame  of 
the  State  Church  of  England.  He  quickened  it  with  a  fresh  sense  of  <hity. 
Ilia  hope  and  purpose  were  to  bring  that  church  into  affectionate  and  living 


214  THE  REVEREND  CHARLES  KINGSLLl. 

brotherhood  with  modern  thought,  work,  and  society.  An  early  friend  and 
companion  of  John  Sterling  (the  two  friends  married  two  sisters),  Maurice 
had  all  the  sweetness  and  purity  of  Carlyle's  hero,  with  a  far  greater  intellec- 
tual strength.  Mr.  Maurice  set  himself  to  make  the  English  Church  a  prac- 
tical influence  in  modern  thought  and  society.  He  did  not  believe  in  a  religion 
sitting  apart  on  the  cold  Olympian  heights  of  dogmatic  theology,  and  looking 
down  with  dignified  disdain  upon  the  common  life  and  the  vulgar  toils  of  hu- 
manity. He  held  that  a  church,  if  it  is  good  for  anything,  ought  to  be  able  to 
meet  fair  and  square  the  challenge  of  the  skeptic  and  the  infidel,  and  that  it 
ought  to  concern  itself  about  all  that  concerns  men  arid  women.  One  of  the 
fruits  of  his  long  and  valuable  labor  is  the  Workinginen's  College  in  Red  Lion 
Square,  London,  an  institution  of  which  he  became  the  principal  and  to  which 
he  devoted  much  of  his  time  and  attention.  Only  a  few  weeks  before  his 
death  he  presided  at  one  of  the  public  meetings  of  this  his  favorite  institution. 
lie  was  the  parent  of  the  scheme  of  "  Christian  socialism,"  which  sprang  into 
existence  more  than  twenty  years  ago  and  is  bearing  fruit  still — a  scheme  to 
set  on  foot  cooperative  associations  among  working  men  on.  sound  and  progres- 
sive principles;  to  help  the  working  men  by  advances  of  capital,  in  order  that 
they  might  thus  be  enabled  to  help  themselves.  One  of  Mr.  Maurice's  earliest 
and  most  ardent  pupils  was  Charles  Kingsley;  another  was  Thomas  Hughes. 
In  helping  Mr.  Maurice  to  carry  out  these  schemes  Kingsley  was  brought  into 
frequent  intercourse  with  some  of  the  London  Chartists,  and  especially  with 
the  working  tailors,  who  have  nearly  all  a  strong  radical  tendency.  Kingsley's 
impulsive  sympathies  took  fire,  and  flamed  out  with  the  novel"  Alton  Locke, 
Tailor  and  Poet." 

That  extraordinary  Chartist  movement,  so  long  in  preparation  and  so  sud- 
denly extinguished,  how  completely  a  thing  of  the  past  it  seems  to  have  be- 
come! Only  twenty-four  years  have  passed  since  its  collapse.  Men  under 
forty  can  recall,  as  if  it  were  yesterday,  all  its  incidents  and  its  principal  fig- 
ures. People  in  the  United  States  know  that  my  friend  Henry  Vincent  is  still 
only  in  his  prime ;  he  was  one  of  its  earliest  and  foremost  leaders.  But  it  seems 
as  old  and  dead  as  a  peasant- war  of  ihe  Middle  Ages.  It  was  a  strange  jumble 
of  politics  and  social  complaints.  It  was  partly  the  blind,  passionate  protest  of 
working  men  who  knew  that  they  had  no  right  to  starve  and  suffer  in  a  pros- 
perous country,  but  who  hardly  knew  where  the  real  grievance  lay.  It  was 
partly  the  protest  of  untaught  and  eager  intelligence  against  the  brutal  .apathy 
of  government  which  would  do  nothing  for  national  education.  Its  political 
demands  were  very  modest.  Some  of  them  have  since  been  quietly  carried 
into  law;  some  of  them  have  been  quietly  dismissed  into  the  realm  of  anach- 
ronisms. Chartism  was  indeed  rather  a  wild  cry,  a  passionate  yearning  of 
lonely  men  for  combination,  than  any  definite  political  enterprise.  One  looks 
back  now  with  a  positive  wonder  upon  the-  savage  stupidity  of  the  ruling 
classes  which  so  nearly  converted  it  into  a  rebellion.  Of  course  it  was  in  some 
instances  seized  hold  of  by  selfish  and  scheming  politicians,  who  played  with 
it  for  their  own  purposes.  Of  course  it  had  its  evil  counsellors,  its  false  friends, 
its  cowards,  and  its  traitors.  But  on  the  whole  there  was  a  noble  spirit  of 
manly  honesty  pervading  the  movement,  which  to  my  mind  fills  it  with  a  roman- 
tic interest  and  ought  to  secure  for  it  an  honorable  memory.  It  found  leaders 
in  many  cases  outside  its  own  classes.  There  was,  for  example,  "Tom  Dun- 
combe,"  a  sort  of  Alcibiades  of  English  Radicalism;  a  brilliant  talker  in  Par- 
liament, a  gay  man  of  fashion,  steeped  deep  in  reckless  debt  and  sparkling  dis- 
sipation ;  hand  and  glove  with  the  fast  young  noblemen  of  the  West  End  gam- 


THE  REVEREND  CHARLES  KINGSLEY  215 

bling  houses,  and  the  ardent  Chartist  working  men  of  Shoreditch  and  Clerkon- 
well.  There  was  Feargus  O'Connor — huge,  boistering,  fearless — a  burlesque 
Mirabeau  with  red  hair;  a  splendid  mob-speaker,  who  could  fight  his  way  by 
sheer  strength  of  muscle  and  fist  through  a  hostile  crowd ;  vain  of  his  half- 
mythical  descent  from  Irish  kings,  even  when  he  delighted  in  being  hail  fellow 
well  met  with  tailors  and  hod-carriers;  revelling  in  the  fiercest  struggles  of 
politics  and  the  wildest  freaks  of  prolonged  debauchery.  O'Connor  tried  to 
crowd  half  a  dozen  lives  into  one,  and  the  natural  result  was  that  he  prema- 
turely broke  down.  For  a  long  time  before  his  death  he  was  a  mere  lunatic. 
A  strange  fact  was  that  as  his  manners  were  always  eccentric  and  boisterous, 
he  had  become  an  actual  madman  for  months  before  those  around  him  were 
fully  aware  of  the  change.  In  the  House  of  Commons  the  freaks  of  the  poor 
lunatic  were  for  along  time  supposed  to  be  only  more  marked  eccentricities,  or, 
as  some  thought,  insolent  affectations  of  eccentricity.  He  would  rise  while 
Lord  Palmerston  was  addressing  the  House,  walk  up  to  the  great  minister,  and 
give  him  a  tremendous"  slap  on  the  back.  One  night  he  actually  assaulted  a 
member  of  the  House,  and  the  Speaker  ordered  his  arrest.  Feargus  sauntered 
coolly  out  into  the  lobbies.  The  sergeant-at-arms  was  bidden  to  go  forth  and 
arrest  the  offender.  Lord  Charles  Russell  (brother  of  Earl  Russell),  then  and 
now  sergeaut-at-arms,  is  a  thin,  little,  feeble  man.  I  have  been  told  by  some 
who  witnessed  it  that  the  scene  in  the  lobbies  became  highly  amusing.  Lord 
Charles  went  with  reluctant  steps  about  his  awful  task.  By  this  time  every- 
body was  beginning  to  suspect  that  O'Connor  was  really  a  madman.  Anyhow, 
lie  was  a  giant,  and  at  his  sanest  moments  perfectly  reckless.  Now  it  is  not  :t 
pleasant  task  for  a  weak  and  little  man  to  be  sent  to  arrest  even  a  sane  giant; 
but  only  think  of  laying  hands  on  a  giant  who  appeal's  to  be  out  of  his  senses! 
The  dignity  of  his  office,  however,  had  to  be  upheld,  and  Lord  Charles  trotted 
quietly  after  his  huge  quarry.  He  cast  imploring  looks  at  member  after  mem- 
ber, but  it  was  none  of  their  business  to  interfere,  and  they  had  no  inclination 
to  volunteer.  Some  of  them  indeed  were  deeply  engrossed  in  speculations  as 
to  what  would  happen  if  Feargus  were  suddenly  to  turn  round.  Would  the  ser- 
geant-at-arms  put  his  dignitj"  in  his  pocket  and  actually  run  ?  Or,  if  he  stood  his 
ground,  what  would  be  the  result?  Happily,  however,  just  as  Feargus  and  his 
unwilling  pursuer  reached  Westminster  Hall,  the  eager  eye  of  Lord  Charles 
Russell  descried  a  little  knot  of  policemen;  he  hailed  them;  they  came  up,  and 
the  sergeant-at-arms  did  his  duty  and  the  capture  was  effected.  I  can  well 
remember  seeing  O'Connor,  somewhere  about  this  time,  sauntering  through 
Covent  Garden  market,  with  rolling,  restless  gait;  his  hair,  that  once  was  fiery 
red,  all  snowy  white ;  his  eye  gleaming  with  the  peculiar,  quick,  shallow,  ever- 
changing  glitter  of  madness.  The  poor  fellow  rambled  from  fruit-stall  to 
fruit-stall,  talking  all  the  while  to  himself,  sometimes  taking  up  a  fruit  as  if  he 
meant  to  buy  it,  and  then  putting  it  down  with  a  vacant  laugh  and  walking  on. 
It  was  a  pitiable  spectacle.  His  light  of  reason  soon  flickered  out  altogether, 
and  death  came  to  his  relief. 

I  must  not  omit  to  mention,  when  speaking  of  the  Chartist  leaders,  the 
brave,  disinterested,  and  highly-gifted  Ernest  Jones,  who  sacrificed  such  bright 
worldly  prospects  for  the  cause  of  the  People's  Charter.  Long  after  the  Charter 
and  its  agitation  were  dead,  Jones  emerged  into  public  life  again,  still  com- 
paratively a  young  man,  and  he  seemed  about  to  enter  on  a  career  both  bril- 
liant and  valuable.  An  immature  and  unexpected  death  interposed. 

However,  I  have  wandered  away  from  the  subject  of  my  paper.  Charlea 
Kingsley  came  to  know  the  principal  working  men  among  the  Chartists,  and 


216  THE  REVEREND  CHARLES  KINGSLEY. 

his  impulsive  nature  was  greatly  influenced  by  their  words  and  their  lives. 
Most  of  their  leaders  drawn  from  other  classes,  O'Connor  especially,  he  dis- 
trusted and  disliked.  But  the  rank  and  tile  of  the  movement,  the  working 
men,  the  sufferers,  the  "  proletaires  "  as  they  would  be  called  nowadays,  at- 
tracted his  kindly  heart.  Chartism  had  fallen.  It  collapsed  suddenly  in  18-iS; 
died  amid  Homeric  laughter  of  the  public.  It  fell  mainly  because  it  had  come 
to  occupy  a  false  position  altogether.  Partly  by  ignorance,  partly  by  the  self- 
ish folly  of  some  of  its  leaders,  and  partly  by  the  severity  of  the  govern- 
rnent  measures,  the  movement  had  been  driven  into  a  dilemma  which  it 
never  originally  contemplated.  It  must  either  go  into  open  rebellion  or  sur- 
render. It  was  jammed  up  like  MacMahon  at  Sedan.  Chartism  had  no  real 
wish  to  rebel,  although  of  course  the  flame  of  the  recent  revolution  in  Paris 
had  glared  over  it  and  made  it  wild;  and  it  had  no  means  of  carrying  on  a  re- 
volt for  a  single  day.  So  it  could  only  surrender;  and  the  surrender  took 
place  under  conditions  which  made  it  seem  utterly  ridiculous.  Kingsley  was 
seized  with  the  idea  of  crystallizing  all  this  into  a  romance.  He  had  as  a  fur- 
ther stimulant  and  guide  the  work  which  Henry  Mayhevv  was  then  publishing, 
'  London  Labor  and  the  London  Poor,"  a  serial  which  by  its  painful  and 
startling  revelations  was  working  a  profound  impression  on  England.  May- 
hew's  narratives  were  often  inaccurate,  for  he  could  not  conduct  the  whole 
enterprise  himself,  and  had  sometimes  to  call  in  the  aid  of  careless  and  un- 
trustworthy associates,  who  occasionally  found  it  easier  to  throw  off  a  bit  of 
sentimental  or  sensational  romance  than  to  pursue  a  patient  inquiry.  But  the 
general  effect  of  the  publication  was  healthful  and  practical,  and  it  became  the 
parent  of  nearly  all  the  efforts  that  followed  to  lay  bare  and  ameliorate  the 
condition  of  the  London  poor.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  had  a  great  in- 
fluence on  the  impressionable  mind  of  Charles  Kingsley.  He  wrote  "  Alton 
Locke,"  and  the  book  became  a  great  success.  The  Tailor  and  Poet  was  the 
hero  of  the  hour.  "Blackwood"  at  once  christened  Alton  Locke  "Young 
Remnants ;"  but  Young  Remnants  survived  the  jpke.  The  novel  is  full  of 
nonsense  and  extravagance ;  and  with  all  its  sympathy  for  tailors,  it  has  a  great 
deal  of  Kingsley's  characteristic  affection  for  rank  and  birth.  But  it  had  a 
really  great  idea  at  its  heart,  and  struck  out  one  or  two  new  characters — es- 
pecially that  of  the  old  Scotch  bookseller — and  it  made  its  mark.  The  peculiar- 
ity, however,  to  which  I  wish  now  especially  to  direct  attention  is  its  utter  absence 
of  practical  thinking-power.  Nowhere  can  you  find  any  proof  that  the  author 
is  able  to  think  about  anything.  An  idea  strikes  him;  he  seizes  it,  and,  to  use 
Hawthorne's  expression,  "  wields  it  like  a  flail."  Then  he  throws  it  down  and 
lakes  up  something  else,  to  employ  it  in  the  same  wild  and  incoherent  fashion. 
This  is  Kingsley  all  out,  and  always.  He  is  not  content  with  developing  his 
one  only  gift  of  any  literary  value — the  capacity  to  paint  big,  striking  pictures 
with  a  strong  glare  or  glow  on  them.  He  firmly  believes  himself  a  profound 
philosopher  and  social  reformer,  and  he  will  insist  on  obtruding  before  the 
world  on  all  occasions  his  absolute  incapacity  for  any  manner  of  reasoning  on 
any  subject  whatsoever.  Wild  with  intellectual  egotism,  and  blind  to  all 
teaching  from  without,  Kingsley  rushes  at  great  and  difficult  subjects  head 
downwards  like  a  bull.  Thus  he  tackled  Chartism,  and  society,  and  competi- 
tion, and  political  economy,  and  what  not,  in  his  "Alton  Locke";  and  thus  he 
has  gone  on  ever  since  and  will  to  the  end  of  his  chapter,  always  singling  out 
for  the  display  of  his  powers  the  very  subjects  whereof  he  knows  least,  and  is 
by  the  whole  constitution  of  his  intellect  and  temperament  least  qualified  to 
judge. 


THE  REVEREND  CHARLES  KIXGSLEY.  217 

I  am  writing  now  rather  about  Kingsley  himself  than  about  his  books,  with 
which  the  readers  of  "  The  Galaxy  "  are  of  course  well  acquainted.  I  there- 
fore pass  over  the  many  books  he  produced  between  "  Alton  Locke  "  and  "  West- 
ward Ho!" — and  I  dwell  upon  the  latter  only  because  it  illustrates  the  next 
great  idea  which  got  hold  of  the  author  after  the  little  fever  about  Chartism 
had  passed  away.  I  suppose  "Westward  Ho!"  may  be  regarded  as  the  first 
appearance  of  the  school  of  Muscular  Christianity.  Mr.  Kingsley  started  for 
our  benefit  the  huge  British  hero  who  could  do  anything  in  the  way  of  fighting 
and  walking,  and  propagated  the  doctrines  of  the  English  Church.  To  read  the 
Bible  and  to  kill  the  Spaniards  was  the  whole  duty  of  the  ideal  Briton  of  Eliza- 
beth's time,  according  to  this  authority.  The  notion  was  a  success.  In  a  mo- 
ment our  literature  became  flooded  with  pious  athletes  who  knocked  their  ene- 
mies down  with  texts  from  the  Scriptures  and  left-handers  from  the  shoulder. 
All  these  heroes  were  of  necessity  "  gentlemen."  One  of  the  principal  articles 
of  the  new  gospel  according  to  Kingsley  was  that  truth,  valor,  muscle,  and 
theological  fervor  were  only  possessed  in  their  fulness  by  the  scions  of  good 
old  English  county  families.  Other  nations  seldom  had  such  qualities  at  all ; 
never  had  them  to  perfection;  and  even  favored  Britain  only  saw  them  proper- 
ly illustrated  in  country  gentlemen  of  long  descent.  Of  course  this  sort  of 
thing,  which  was  for  the  moment  a  sincere  idea  Avith  Kingsley,  became  a  mere 
affectation  among  his  followers  and  admirers.  The  fighting-parson  pattern  of 
hero  was  for  a  while  as  great  a  bore  as  the  rough  and  ugly  hero  after  Jane 
Eyre's  "Rochester,"  or  the  colossal  and  corrupt  guardsman  whom  "Guy  Liv- 
ingstone "  sent  abroad  on  the  world.  Certainly  Kingsley's  hero  was  a  better 
style  of  man  than  Guy  Livingstone's,  for  at  the  worst  he  was  only  an  egotistical 
savage,  and  not  a  profligate.  But  I  think  he  did  a  good  deal  of  harm  in  his  daj-. 
He  helped  to  encourage  and  inflate  that  feeling  of  national  self-conceit  which 
makes  people  such  nuisances  to  their  neighbors,  and  he  fostered  that  odious 
reverence  for  mere  force  and  power  which  Carlyle  had  already  made  fashion- 
able. Kingsley  himself  appears  to  have  become  "  possessed  "  by  his  own  idea 
as  if  by  some  unmanageable  spirit.  It  banished  all  his  chartism  and  democ- 
racy and  liberalism,  and  the  rest  of  it.  Under  its  influence  Kingsley  out-Cai-- 
lyled  Carlyle  in  the  worship  of  strong  despotisms  and  force  of  any  kind.  He 
went  out  of  his  way  to  excuse  slavery  in  the  Southern  States.  He  became  the 
fervent  panegyrist  of  Governor  Eyre  of  Jamaica.  When  two  sides  were  possi- 
ble to  any  question  of  human  politics,  he  was  sure  to  take  the  wrong  one. 
Nothing  for  long  years,  I  think,  has  been  more  repulsive,  and  in  its  way  more 
mischievous,  than  the  cant  about  "  strength  "  which  Kingsley  did  so  much  to 
diffuse  and  to  glorify. 

Meanwhile  his  irrepressible  energy  was  always  driving  him  into  new  fields 
of  work.  It  never  allowed  him  time  to  think.  The  moment  any  sort  of  idea 
struck  him,  he  rushed  at  it  and  crushed  it  into  the  shape  of  a  book  or  an  essay. 
He  wrote  historical  .novels,  philosophical  novels,  and  theological  novels.  He 
wrote  poetry — yards  of  poetry — volumes  of  poetry.  There  really  is  a  great 
deal  of  the  spirit  of  poetry  in  him,  and  he  has  done  better  things  with  the  hex- 
ameter verse  than  better  poets  have  done.  There  was  for  a  long  time  a  fervid 
school  of  followers  who  swore  by  him,  and  would  have  it  that  he  was  to  be  the 
great  English  poet  of  the  century.  He  published  essays,  tracts,  lectures,  and 
sermons  without  number.  He  seems  to  have  made  up  his  mind  to  publish  in 
book  form  somehow  everything  that  he  had  spoken  or  written  anywhere.  He 
inundated  the  leading  newspapers  with  letters  on  this,  that,  and  the  other  sub- 
ject. He  was  appointed  professor  of  modern  historj*  at  the  University  of  Cam- 


218  THE  REVEREND  CHARLES  KINGSLEY. 

bridge  on  the  death  of  Sir  James  Stephen,  and  he  launched  at  once  into  a  se- 
ries of  lectures,  which  were  almost  immediately  published  in  book  form.  Why 
he  published  them  it  was  hard  for  even  vanity  itself  to  explain,  because  with 
characteristic  bluntness  he  began  his  course  with  the  acknowledgment  that  he 
really  knew  nothing  in  particular  about  the  subjects  whereon  he  had  under- 
taken to  instruct  the  University  and  the  world,  lie  made  up  in  courage,  how- 
ever, for  anything  he  may  have  lacked  in  knowledge.  He  went  bravely  in  for 
an  onslaught  on  the  positive  theory  of  history — on  Comte,  Mill,  Buckle,  Dar- 
win, and  everybody  else.  He  made  it  perfectly  clear  very  soon  that  he  did 
not  know  even  what  these  authors  profess  to  teach.  He  flatly  denied  that 
there  is  any  such  thing  as  an  inexorable  law  in  nature.  He  proved  that  even 
the  supposed  law  of  gravitation  is  not  by  any  means  the  rigid  and  universal 
sort  of  thing  that  Newton  and  sueh-like  persons  have  supposed.  How,  it  may 
be  asked,  did  he  prove  this?  In  the  following  words:  "If  I  choose  to  catch  a 
stone,  I  can  hold  it  in  my  hands;  it  has  not  fallen  to  the  ground,  and  will  not 
(ill  I  let  it.  So  much  for  the  inevitable  action  of  the  laws  of  gravity."  This 
way  of  dealing  with  the  question  may  seem  to  many  readers  nothing  better 
than  downright  buffoonery.  But  Kiugsley  was  as  grave  as  a  church  and  as  ear- 
nest as  an  owl.  He  fully  believed  that  he  was  refuting  the  pedants  who  be- 
lieve in  the  inevitable  action  of  the  law  of  gravitation,  when  he  talked  of  hold- 
ing a  stone  in  his  hand.  That  an  impulsive,  illogical  man  should  on  the  spur 
of  the  moment  talk  this  kind  of  nonsense,  even  from  a  professor's  chair,  is  not 
perhaps  wonderful;  but  it  does  seem  a  little  surprising  that  he  should  see  it  in 
print,  revise  it,  and  publish  it,  without  ever  becoming  aware  of  its  absurdity. 

In  the  same  headlong  spirit  Mr.  Kingsley  rushed  into  his  famous  controver- 
sy with  Dr.  John  Henry  Newman.  I  have  already,  when  writing  of  Dr.  New- 
man, alluded  to  this  controversy,  which  for  a  time  excited  the  greatest  inter- 
est and  indeed  the  greatest  amusement  in  England.  I  only  refer  to  it  now  as 
an  illustration  of  the  surprising  hotheadedness  and  lack  of  thinking  power 
which  characterize  the  author  of  "Alton  Locke."  Dr.  Newman  preached  a 
sermon  on  "  Wisdom  and  Innocence."  Mr.  Kingsley  went  out  of  his  way  to 
discourse  and  comment  on  this  sermon,  and  publicly  declared  that  its  doctrine 
was  an  exhortation  to  disregard  truth.  "  Dr.  Newman  informs  us  that  truth 
need  not  and  on  the  whole  ought  not  to  be  a  virtue  for  its  own  sake."  Of 
course  this  was  as  grave  a  charge  as  could  possibly  be  made  against  a  great  re- 
ligious teacher,.  It  was  doubly  odious  and  offensive  to  Dr.  Newman  because 
it  was  the  revival  of  an  old  and  familiar  charge  against  the  church  he  had 
lately  entered.  It  was  made  by  Kingsley  in  an  oft-hand,  careless  sort  of  way, 
is  if  it  were  something  acknowledged  and  indisputable — as  if  some  one  were  to 
#ay,  "  Horace  Greeley  informs  us  that  a  protective  tariff  is  often  useful,"  or 
"Henry  Ward  Beecher  is  in  favor  of  early  rising."  Newman  wrote  with  a 
cold  civility  to  ask  in  what  passage  of  his  writings*  any  such  doctrine  was  to  be 
found.  Of  course  nothing  of  the  kind  was  to  be  found.  If  it  were  possible  to 
conceive  of  any  divine  in  our  days  holding  such  a  doctrine,  we  may  be  perfect- 
ly certain  that  he  would  never  put  it  into  print.  Newman  was  known  to  all 
the  world  as  the  purest  and  most  austere  devotee  of  what  he  believed  to  be  the 
truth.  He  had  sacrificed  the  most  brilliant  career  in  the  Church  of  England 
for  his  convictions,  and,  strange  to  say,  had  yet  retained  the  admiration  and  the 
affection  of  those  whose  religious  fellowship  he  had  renounced.  Kingsley  had 
but  one  course  in  fairness  and  common  sense  open  to  him.  He  ought  to  have 
franklj'  apologized.  He  ought  to  have  owned  that  he  had  spoken  without 
thinking;  that  he  had  blurted  out  the  words  without  observing  the  gravity  of 


THE  REVEREND  CHARLES  KINGSLEY.  219 

the  charge  they  c  mtained ;  and  that  he  was  sorry  for  it.  But  he  did  not  do 
this.  lie  published  a  letter,  in  which  he  said  that  Dr.  Newman  having  denied 
that  his  doctrine  bore  the  meaning  Mr.  Kingsley  had  put  upon  it,  he  (Kings 
If y)  could  only  express  his  regret  at  having  mistaKeu  mm.  This  was  nearly 
as  bud  as  the  first  charge.  It  distinctly  conveyed  the  idea  that  but  for  Dr. 
Newman's  subsequent  explanation  and  denial,  certain  words  of  his  might  fairly 
have  been  understood  to  bear  the  odious  meaning  ascribed  to  them.  Dr.  New- 
man returned  to  the  charge,  still  with  a  chill  urbanity  which  I  cannot  help 
thinking  Kingsley  mistook  for  weakness  or  fear.  He  pointed  out  that  he  hail 
never  denied  anything ;  that  there  was  nothing  for  him  to  den}' ;  that  Mr. 
Kingsley  had  charged  him  with  teaching  a  certain  odious  doctrine,  and  he 
therefore  asked  Mr.  Kingsley  to  point  to  the  passage  containing  the  doctrine, 
or  frankly  own  that  there  was  no  such  passage  in  existence.  Kingsley  there- 
upon took  the  worst,  the  most  unfair,  and  as  it  proved  the  most  foolish  course 
a  man  could  possibly  have  pursued.  He  went  to  work  to  fasten  on  Newman 
by  a  constructive  argument,  drawn  from  the  general  tendency  of  his  teaching, 
a  belief  in  the  doctrine  of  which  he  was  unable  to  find  any  specific  statement. 
Then  opened  out  that  controversy,  which  was  quite  an  event  in  its  time,  and 
set  everybody  talking.  Newman's  was  an  intellect  which  must  be  described 
as  the  peer  of  Stuart  Mill's  or  Herbert  Spencer's.  He  was  a  perfect  master  of 
polemical  science.  He  could  write,  when  he  thought  fit,  with  a  vitriolic  keen- 
ness of  sarcasm.  \Vh°n  he  had  allowed  Kingsley  to  entangle  himself  suffi- 
ciently, Ne \vman  fairly  opened  fire,  and  the  rest  of  the  debate  was  like  a  duel 
between  some  blundering,  wrong-headed  cudgel-player  from  a  village  green, 
and  some  accomplished  professor  of  the  science  of  the  rapier  from  Paris  or  Vi- 
enna. Not  the  least  amusing  thing  about  the  controversy  was  the  manner  in 
which  it  put  Kingsley  into  open  antagonism  with  his  own  teaching.  He  en- 
deavored gratuitously  and  absurdly  to  convict  Dr.  Newman  of  a  disregard  for 
the  truth,  because  Newman  believed  in  the  miracles  of  the  saints.  For,  he  ar- 
gued, a  man  of  Newman's  intellect  could  not  believe  in  such  things  if  he  in- 
quired into  them.  But  he  did  not  inquire  into  them ;  he  taught  that  they  were 
not  to  be  questioned  but  accepted  as  orthodox.  Thereby  he  showed  that  he 
preferred  orthodoxy  to  truth — "truth,  the  capital  virtue,  the  virtue  of  vir- 
tues, without  which  all  others  are  rotten.''  Now,  that  sounds  very  well,  and 
we  all  agree  in  what  Kingsley  says  of  the  truth.  But  Kingsley  had  not  long 
before  been  assailing  Bishop  Colenso  for  his  infidelity.  Kingsley  declared  him- 
self shocked  at  the  publication  of  a  work  like  Dr.  Colenso's,  which  claimed  and 
exercised  a  license  of  inquiry  that  seemed  to  him  "  anything  but  reverent." 
He  distinctl}'  laid  it  down  that  the  liberty  of  religious  criticism  must  be  "rev- 
erent/' and  "  within  the  limits  of  orthodoxy !  "  Now,  I  am  not  challenging  Mr. 
Kingsley's  doctrine  as  to  the  limit  of  religious  inquiry.  That  forms  no  part  of 
my  purpose.  But  it  is  perfectly  obvious  that  if  to  limit  inquiry  within  the 
bounds  of  orthodoxy  shows  a  disregard  for  truth  in  John  Henry  Newman,  the 
same  practice  must  be  evidence  of  a  similar  disregard  in  Charles  Kingsley. 
Of  coarse  Kingsley  never  thought  of  this — never  thought  about  the  matter  at 
all.  He  disliked  Colenso's  teaching  on  the  one  hand  and  Newman's  on  the 
other.  He  said  the  first  thing  that  came  into  his  mind  against  each  in  turn, 
and  never  heeded  the  fact  that  the  reproach  he  employed  in  the  former  case 
was  utterly  inconsistent  with  that  which  he  uttered  in  the  other.  I  do  not  be- 
lieve, however,  that  the  controversy  did  Kingsley  any  harm.  Nobody  ever  e'x- 
pected  consistency  or  rational  argument  from  him.  People  were  amused,  and 
laughed,  and  perhaps  wondered  why  Dr.  Newman  should  have  taken  any 


220  THE  REVEREND  CHARLES  KINGSLEY. 

trouble  in  the  matter  at  all.  But  Kingsley  remained  in  popular  estimation  just 
the  same  as  before — blundering,  hot-headed,  boisterous,  but  full  of  brilliant  im- 
agination, and  thoroughly  sound  at  heart. 

Thus  Charles  Kingsley  is  always  at  work.  Lately  he  has  been  describing 
some  of  the  scenery  of  the  West  Indies,  and  proclaiming  the  virtues  of  Austra- 
lian potted  meats.  He  has  thrown  his  whole  soul  into  the  Australian  meat 
question.  The  papers  have  run  over  with  letters  from  him  intended  to  prove 
t<>  the  world  how  good  and  cheap  it  is  to  eat  the  mutton  and  beef  brought  in 
tin  cans  from  Australia.  I  believe  Mr.  Kingsley  acknowledges  that  all  his  en- 
ergy and  eloquence  have  been  unequal  to  the  task  of  persuading  his  servants 
to  eat  the  excellent  food  which  he  is  hiinself  willing  to  have  at  his  table.  lie 
has  also  been  lecturing  on  temperance,  and  delivering  a  philippic  against  Dar- 
win. He  has  also  written  a  paper  condemning  and  deprecating  the  modern 
critical  spirit.  There  is  one  rule,  he  insists,  "  by  which  we  should  judge  all 
human  opinions,  endeavors,  characters."  That  is,  "Are  they  trying  to  lessen 
the  sum  of  human  misery,  of  human  ignorance?  Are  they  trying,  however 
clumsily,  to  cure  physical  suffering,  weakness,  deformity,  disease,  and  to  make 
human  bodies  what  God  would  have  them  ?  .  .  .  If  so,  let  us  judge  them  no 
further.  Let  them  pass  out  of  the  pale  of  our  criticism.  Let  their  creed  seem 
to  us  defective,  their  opinions  fantastic,  their  means  irrational.  God  must 
judge  of  that,  not  we.  They  are  trying  to  do  good;  then  they  are  children  of 
the  light."  This  is  not,  perhaps,  the  spirit  in  which  Kingsley  himself  criticised 
Newman  or  Colenso.  But  if  we  judge  him  according  to  the  principle  which 
he  recommends,  he  would  assuredly  take  high  rank;  for  I  never  heard  any 
one  question  his  sincerity  and  his  honest  purpose  to  do  good.  Of  course  he  is 
often  terribly  provoking.  His  feminine  and  almost  hysterical  impulsiveness, 
and  his  antiquated,  feudal  devotion  to  rank,  are  difficult  to  bear  always  without 
strong  language.  His  utter  absence  of  sympathy  with  political  emancipation 
is  a  lamentable  weakness.  His  self-conceit  and  egotism  often  make  him  a  lu- 
dicrous object.  Still,  he  has  an  honest  heart,  and  he  tries  to  do  the  work  of  a 
man ;  and  he  is  one  of  those  who  would,  if  they  could,  make  the  English  State 
Church  still  a  living,  an  active,  and  an  all-pervading  influence.  As  a  preacher 
and  a  pastor  he  often  reminds  me  of  the  Rev.  Henry  Ward  Beecher.  Of  course 
he  is  far  below  Mr.  Beecher  in  all  oratorical  gifts  as  well  as  in  political  en- 
lightenment; but  he  has  the  same  prefervid  and  illogical  nature,  the  same 
vigorous,  self-sufficient  temperament,  the  same  tendency  to  "slop  over,"  the 
same  generous  energy  in  any  cause  that  seems  to  him  good. 

It  will  be  inferred  that  I  do  not  rate  Mr.  Kingsley  very  highly  as  an  author, 
He  can  describe  glowing  scenery  admirably,  and  he  can  vigorously  ring  the 
changes  on  his  one  or  two  ideas — the  muscular  Englishman,  the  glory  of  the 
Elizabethan  discoverers,  and  so  on.  He  is  a  scholar,  and  he  has  written  verses 
which  sometimes  one  is  on  the  point  of  mistaking  for  poetry,  so  much  of  the 
poet's  feelings  have  they  about  them.  He  can  do  a  great  many  things  very 
cleverly.  He  belongs  to  a  clever  family.  His  brother,  Henry  Kingsley,  is  a 
spirited  and  dashing  novelist,  whom  the  critics  sneer  at  a  good  deal,  but  whose 
books  always  command  a  large  circulation,  and  have  made  a  distinctive  mark. 
Perhaps  if  Charles  Kingsley  had  done-  less  he  might  have  done  better.  Hu- 
man capacity  is  limited.  It  is  not  given  to  mortal  to  be  a  great  preacher,  a 
great  philosopher,  a  great  scholar,  a  great  poet,  a  great  historian,  a  great  nov- 
elist, an  indefatigable  country  parson,  and  a  successful  man  in  fashionable  so- 
ciety. Mr.  Kingsley  seems  never  to  have  quite  made  up  his  mind  for  winch 
of  these  callings  to  go  in  especially,  and  being  with  all  his  versatility  not  at  all 


THE  REVEREND  CHARLES  KIXGSLEY.  221 

many-sided,  but  strictly  one-sided,  and  almost  one-ideaed,  the  result  of  course 
has  been  that,  touching  success  at  many  points,  he  has  absolutely  mastered  it  at 
none.  His  place  in  letters  has  been  settled  this  long  time.  Since  "  Westward 
Ho!  "  at  the  latest,  he  has  never  added  half  a  cubit  to  his  stature.  The  "  Char- 
tist Parson  "  has,  on  the  other  hand,  been  growing  more  and  more  aristocratic, 
illiberal,  and  even  servile  in  politics.  His  discourse  on  the  recovery  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales  was  the  very  hyperbole  of  the  most  old-fashioned  loyalty — a 
discourse  worthy  of  Filmer,  and  utterly  out  of  place  in  the  present  century. 
Muscular  Christianity  has  shrunk  and  withered  long  since.  The  professorship 
of  modern  history  was  a  failure,  and  has  been  given  up.  Darwin  is  flourishing, 
and  I  am  not  certain  about  the  success  of  Australian  beef.  All  this  acknowl- 
edged, however,  it  must  still  be  owned  that,  failing  in  this,  that,  and  the  other 
attempt,  and  never  probably  achieving  any  real  and  enduring  success,  Charles 
Kingfeley  has  been  an  influence  and  a  name  of  mark  in  the  Victorian  age.  I  can- 
not, indeed,  well  imagine  that  age  without  him,  although  his  presence  is  some- 
times only  associated  with  it  as  that  of  Malvolio  with  the  court  of  the  fail'  lady 
in  "  Twelfth  Night."  Men  of  far  greater  intellect  have  made  their  presence 
less  strongly  felt,  and  imprinted  their  image  much  less  clearly  on  the  minds  of 
their  contemporaries.  He  is  an  example  of  how  much  may  be  done  by  ener- 
getic temper,  fearless  faith  in  self,  an  absence  of  all  sense  of  the  ridiculous,  a 
passionate  sympathy,  and  a  wealth  of  half-poetic  descriptive  power.  If  ever 
we  have  a  woman's  parliament  in  England,  Charles  Kingsley  ought  to  be  its 
chaplain;  for  I  know  of  no  clever  man  whose  mind  and  temper  more  aptly  il- 
lustrate the  illogical  impulsiveness,  the  rapid  emotional  changes,  the  generous, 
often  wrong-headed  vehemence,  the  copious  flow  of  fervid  words,  the  vivid 
freshness  of  description  without  analysis,  and  the  various  other  peculiarities 
which,  justly  or  unjustly,  the  world  has  generally  agreed  to  regard  as  the  spe- 
cial characteristics  of  woman. 


MR.  JAMES  ANTHONY  FROUDE. 


MR.  FROUDE,  I  perceive,  is  about  to  visit  the  United  States.  Reddas  in- 
columem  !  He  is  a  man  of  mark — with  whatever  faults,  a  great  Eng- 
lishman.  It  will  not  take  the  citizens  of  New  York  and  Boston  long  to  become 
quite  as  familiar  with  his  handsome,  thoughtful  face  as  the  people  of  London. 
Mr.  Fronde  rarely  makes  his  appearance  at  any  public  meeting  or  demonstra- 
tion of  any  kind.  He  delivers  a  series  of  lectures  now  and  then  to  one  of  the 
great  solemn  literary  institutions.  He  is  a  member  of  some  of  our  literary  and 
scientific  societies.  He  used  at  one  time  occasionally  to  attend  the  meetings  of 
the  Newspaper  Press  Fund  Committee,  where  his  retiring  ways  and  grave, 
meditative  demeanor  reminded  me,  I  cannot  tell  why,  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 
He  has  many  friends,  and  mingles  freely  in  private  society,  but  to  the  average 
public  he  is  only  a  name;  to  a  large  proportion  of  that  average  public  he  is  not 
even  so  much.  I  presume  he  might  walk  the  Strand  every  day  and  no  head 
turn  round  to  look  after  him.  I  presume  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  get  to- 
gether a  large  public  meeting  of  respectable  and  intelligent  London  rate-payers 
of  whom  not  one  could  tell  who  Mr.  Froude  was,  or  would  be  aroused  to  the 
slightest  interest  by  the  mention  of  his  name.  Who,  indeed,  is  generally 
known  or  cared  about  in  London?  I  do  not  say  universally  known,  for  nobody 
enjoys  that  proud  distinction,  not  even  the  Prince  of  Wales — nay,  not  even  the 
Tichborne  claimant.  But  who  is  ever  generally  known?  Gladstone  and  Dis- 
raeli are ;  and  Bright  is.  Dickens  was,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  Thackeray. 
Archbishop  Manning  and  Mr.  Spurgeon  are,  perhaps ;  and  I  cannot  remember 
anybody  else  just  now.  Palmerston,  in  his  day,  was  better  known  than  any  of 
these;  and  the  Duke  of  Wellington  was  by  far  the  most  widely  known  of  all. 
The  Dnke  of  Wellington  was  the  only  man  who  during  my  time  was  nearly 
as  well  known  in  London  as  Mr.  Greeley  is  in  New  York.  "  How  can  you, 
you  know?'1  as  Mr.  Pecksniff  asks.  We  have  four  millions  of  people  crowded 
into  one  city.  It  takes  a  giant  of  popularity  indeed  to  be  seen  and  recognized 
•above  that  crowd.  As  for  your  Brownings  and  Spencers  and  Froudes  and  the 
rest,  your  mere  men  of  genius — well,  they  have  their  literary  celebrity  and  they 
will  doubtless  have  their  fame.  But  average  London  knows  and  cares  no  more 
about  them  than  it  does  about  you  or  me. 

Therefore,  let  not  any  American  reader,  when  I  describe  Mr.  Froude  as  a 
man  of  mark  and  a  great  Englishman,  assume  that  he  is  a  man  of  mark  with 
the  crowd.  Let  no  American  visitor  to  London  be  astonished  if,  finding  him- 


.MR.  JAMES  ANTHONY  FROUDE.  223 

self  in  the  neighborhood  of  Mr.  Froude's  residence,  and  stepping  into  half  a 
dozen  shops  in  succession  to  ask  for  the  exact  address  of  the  historian,  he  should 
hear  that  nobody  there  knew  anything  about  him.  Nobody  but  scholars  and 
literary  people  knew  anything  about  the  late  George  Grote,  one  of  the  few 
great  philosophic  historians  of  the  modern  world.  Compared  with  the  influ- 
ence of  Mr.  Grote  upon  average  London,  that  of  Mr.  Froude  may  almost  be 
described  as  sensational;  for  Froude  has  stirred  up  literary  and  religious 
controversy,  and  has  been  denounced  and  has  personally  defended  himself,  an  1 
in  that  way  must  have  attracted  some  attention.  At  all  events,  when  New  York 
has  seen  and  heard  Mr.  Froude,  she  Avill  have  seen  and  heard  one  of  the  men 
of  our  time  in  the  true  sense ;  one  of  the  men  who  have  toiled  out  a  channel  for 
a  fresh  current  of  literature  to  run  in,  and  whose  name  can  hereafter  be  omitted 
from  no  list  of  celebrities,  however  select,  which  pretends  to  illustrate  the  char- 
acteristics of  the  Victorian  age  in  England. 

Mr.  Froude  is  a  Devonshire  man,  son  of  a  Protestant  archdeacon.  He  was 
educated  in  Westminster  School,  and  afterward  at  the  famous  Oriel  College, 
Oxford.  He  is  now  some  lifty-four  or  fifty-five  years  of  age,  but  seems, 
and  I  hope  is,  only  in  his  prime.  Froude  is  a  waif  of  that  marvellous  Oxford 
movement  which  began  some  forty  years  ago,  and  of  which  the  strange,  di- 
versely operating  influence  still  radiates  through  English  thought  and  society. 
That  movement  was  a  peculiar  theological  renaissance,  which  partly  converted 
itself  into  a  reaction  and  partly  into  a  revolt.  It  began  with  the  saintly  and 
earnest  Keble ;  its  master  spirits  were  John  Henry  Newman  and  Dr.  Pusey. 
It  proposed  to  vindicate  for  the  Protestant  Church  the  true  place  of  spiritual 
heir  to  the  apostles  and  universal  teacher  of  the  Christian  world.  Newman, 
Pusey,  and  others  worked  in  the  production  of  the  celebrated  "  Tracts  for  the 
Times."  The  results  were  extraordinary.  The  impulse  of  inquiry  thus  set 
going  seemed  to  shake  all  foundations  of  agreement.  It  was  an  explosion 
which  blew  people  various  ways,  they  could  hardly  tell  why  or  how.  It  made 
one  man  a  ritualist,  another  an  Ultramontane  Roman  Catholic,  a  third  a  skep- 
tic. Like  the  two  women  grinding  at  the  mill  in  the  Scripture,  two  devoted 
companions,  brothers  perhaps,  were  seized  by  that  impulse  and  flung  different 
ways.  Before  the  wave  had  subsided  it  tossed  Mr.  Froude,  then  a  young  man 
of  five  or  six  and  twenty,  clear  out  of  his  intended  career  as  a  clergyman  of 
the  Church  of  England.  He  had  taken  deacon's  orders  before  the  change  came 
on  him,  which  drove  him  forth  as  the  two  Newmans  had  been  driven;  but  his 
course  was  more  like  that  of  Francis  Newman  than  of  John  Henry.  He 
seemed,  indeed,  at  one  time  likely  to  pass  away  altogether  into  the  ranks  of  the 
skeptics.  Skepticism  is  in  London  attended  with  no  small  degree  of  social  dis- 
advantage. To  be  in  "  society,"  you  must  believe  as  people  of  good  position 
do.  Dissent  of  any  kind  is  unfashionable.  A  shrewd  friend  of  mine  says  a 
d'ssenter  can  never  enter  London.  Dissent  never  gets  any  further  than  Hack- 
ney or  Clapham,  a  northern  and  a  southern  suburb.  Allowance  being  made 
for  a  touch  of  satirical  exaggeration,  the  saying  is  very  expressive,  and  even  in- 
structive. Probably,  however,  the  odds  are  more  heavily  against  mere  dissent 
than  a  bold,  intellectual  skepticism,  which  may  have  a  piquant  and  alluring 
tlavor  about  it,  and  make  a  man  a  sort  of  curiosity  and  lion,  so  that  "  society  " 
would  tolerate  him  as  it  does  a  poet.  There  was,  however,  nothing  in  exclu- 
sion from  fashionable  society  to  frighten  a  man  like  Froude,  who,  so  far  as  I 
know,  has  never  troubled  himself  about  the  favor  of  the  West  End.  His  first 
work  of  any  note  (for  I  pass  over  "The  Shadows  of  tlu:  Clouds,"  a  novel,  I  be- 


o24  MR.  JAMES  ANTHONY  FROUDE. 

lieve,  which  I  hare  nerer  read  nor  seen)  was  "The  Nemesis  of  Faith."  This 
work  was  published  in  1848,  and  is  chiefly  to  be  valued  now  as  an  illustration 
of  one  stage  of  development  through  which  the  intellect  of  the  author  and  tl>e 
tolerance  of  his  age  were  passing.  "  The  Nemesis  of  Faith  '*  was  declared  a 
skeptical  and  even  an  infidel  book.  It  was  sternly  censured  and  condemned 
by  the  authorities  of  the  university  to  which  Mr.  Froude  had  belonged.  He 
had  won  a  fellowship  in  Exeter  College,  Oxford;  the  college  authorities  pun- 
ished him  for  his  opinions  by  depriving  him  of  it.  "  The  Nemesis  of  Faith  " 
created  a  sensation,  an  excitement  and  alarm,  which  surely  were  extravagant 
even  then  and  would  be  impossible  now.  Its  doubts  and  complaints  would 
•seem  wild  enough  to-day.  Men  of  any  freshness  and  originality  so  commonly 
begin — or  about  that  time  did  begin — their  career  with  a  little  outburst  of  skep- 
ticism, that  the  thing  seems  almost  as  natural  as  it  seemed  to  Major  Pendennis 
for  a  young  peer  to  start  in  public  life  as  a  professed  republican.  Besides,  we 
must  remember  that  "  The  Nemesis  of  Faith  "  was  published  'in  what  the  late 
Lord  Derby  once  called  the  pre-scientific  age.  It  was  the  time  when  skepti- 
cism dealt  only  in  the  metaphysical,  or  the  emotional,  and  had  not  congealed 
into  the  far  more  enduring  and  corroding  form  of  physical  science.  As  well  as 
I  can  remember,  "  The  Nemesis  of  Faith  " — which  I  have  not  seen  for  years — 
was  full  of  life  and  genius,  but  not  particularly  dangerous  to  settled  beliefs. 
However,  a  storm  raged  around  it,  and  around  the  author;  and  finally  Mr. 
Froude  himself  seems  to  have  reconsidered  his  opinions,  for  he  subsequently 
withdrew  the  book  from  circulation.  Its  literary  success,  however,  must  have 
shown  him  clearly  what  his  career  was  to  be.  He  was  at  this  time  drifting 
about  the  world  in  search  of  occupation;  for  he  found  himself  cut  off  from  the 
profession  of  the  Church,  on  which  he  had  intended  to  enter,  and  yet  he  had, 
if  I  am  not  mistaken,  passed  far  enough  within  its  threshold  to  disqualify  him 
for  admission  to  one  of  the  other  professions.  He  began  to  write  for  the 
"  Westminster  Review,"  which  at  that  time  was  in  the  zenith  of  its  intellectual 
celebrity,  and  for  "  Eraser's  Magazine."  His  studies  led  him  especially  into 
the  history  of  the  Tudor  reigns,  and  most  of  his  early  contributions  to  "  Fra- 
ser  "  were  explorations  in  that  field.  Out  of  these  studies  grew  the  "  History 
of  England,"  on  which  the  fame  of  the  author  is  destined  to  rest.  Mr.  Froude 
himself  tells  us  that  he  began  his  task  with  a  strong  inclination  toward  Avhat 
may  be  called  the  conventional  and  orthodox  opinions  of  the  character  of 
Henry  VIII. ;  but  he  found  as  he  studied  the  actual  records  and  state  pa- 
pers that  a  different  sort  of  character  began  to  grow  up  under  his  eyes.  I 
can  easily  imagine  how  his  emotional  and  artistic  nature  gradually  bore  him 
away  further  and  further  in  the  direction  thus  suddenly  opened  up,  until  at  last 
he  had  created  an  entirely  new  Henry  for  himself.  Of  course  the  old  tradi- 
tional notion  of  Henry,  the  simple  idea  which  set  him  down  as  a  monster  of 
lust  and  cruelty,  would  soon  expose  its  irrationality  to  a  mind  like  that  of 
Froude.  But,  like  the  writers  who,  in  revolt  against  the  picture  of  Tiberius 
given  by  Tacitus,  or  that  of  the  French  Revolution  woven  by  Burke,  have 
painted  the  Roman  Emperor  as  an  archangel,  and  the  Revolution  as  a  stain- 
less triumph  of  liberty,  so  Mr.  Froude  seems  to  have  been  driven  into  a  posi- 
tive affection  and  veneration  for  the  subject  of  his  study.  In  1856  the  first  and 
second  volumes  appeared  of  the  "  History  of  England  from  the  Fall  of  Wolscy 
to  the  Death  of  Elizabeth."  There  has  hardly  been  in  our  time  so  fierce  a  lit- 
erary controversy  as  that  which  sprang  up  around  these  two  volumes.  Per- 
haps the  war  of  words  over  Buckle's  first  volume  or  Darwin's  "  Origin  of  Spe- 


MR.  JAMES  ANTHONY  FROUDE.  225 

eies  could  alone  be  compared  with  it.  Mr.  Froude  became  famous  in  a  mo- 
ment. The  "  Edinburgh  Review  "  came  out  with  a  fierce,  almost  a  savage  at- 
tack, to  which  Mr.  Froude  replied  in  an  article  which  he  published  in  "  Fra- 
ser  "  and  to  which  he  affixed  his  own  signature.  Mr.  Froude,  indeed,  has  dur- 
ing his  career  fought  several  battles  in  this  open,  personal  manner — a  thing 
very  uncommon  in  England.  He  has  had  many  enemies.  The  "Saturday 
Review"  has  been  unswerving  in  its  passionate  hostility  to  him,  and  has  even 
gone  so  far  as  to  arraign  his  personal  integrity  as  a  chronicler.  Rumor  in  Lon- 
don ascribes  some  of  the  bitterest  of  the  "Saturday  Review  "  articles  to  the  pen 
of  Mr.  Edward  A.  Freeman,  author  of  "The  History  of  Federal  Government," 
"  The  History  of  the  Norman  Conquest  of  England,"  and  many  historical  es- 
says— a  prolific  writer  in  reviews  and  journals.  Then  as  the  successive  voi- 
umes  of  Fronde's  work  began  to  appear,  and  the  historian  brought  out  his  fa- 
mous portraiture  of  Elizabeth  and  Mary,  it  was  but  natural  that  controversy 
should  thicken  and  deepen  around  him.  The  temper  of  parties  in  Great  Brit- 
ain is  still  nearly  as  hot  as  ever  it  was  on  the  characters  of  Mary  and  Eliza- 
beth. Not  many  years  ago  Thackeray  was  hissed  in  Edinburgh,  because  in  one 
of  his  lectures  he  said  something  which  was  supposed  to  be  disparaging  to  the 
moral  character  of  Mary  of  Scotland.  Then  the  whole  question  of  Saxoi, 
against  Celt  comes  up  again  in  Mr.  Froude's  account  of  English  rule  in  Ire- 
land. Everybody  knows  what  a  storm  of  controversy  broke  around  the  histo- 
rian's head.  He  was  accused  not  merely  of  setting  up  his  own  personal  preju- 
dices as  law  and  history,  but  even  of  misrepresenting  facts  and  actually  mis- 
quoting documents  in  order  to  suit  his  purpose.  I  do  not  mean  to  enter  into 
the  discussion,  for  I  am  not  writing  a  criticism  of  Mr.  Froude's  history,  but 
only  a  chapter  about  Mr.  Froude  himself.  But  I  confess  I  can  quite  under- 
stand why  so  many  readers,  not  blind  partisans  of  any  cause,  become  impatient 
with  some  of  the  passages  of  his  works.  He  coolly  and  deliberately  commends 
as  virtue  in  one  person  or  one  race  the  very  qualities,  the  very  deeds  which  he 
stigmatizes  as  the  blackest  and  basest  guilt  in  others.  "  Show  me  the  man,  and 
I  will  show  you  the  law,"  used  to  be  an  old  English  proverb,  illustrating  the 
depth  which  judicial  partisanship  and  corruption  had  reached.  "  Show  me  tha 
person,  and  I  will  show  you  the  moral  law,"  might  well  be  the  motto  of  Mr. 
Fronde's  history.  But  I  believe  Mr.  Froude  to  be  utterly  incapable  of  any 
misrepresentation  or  distortion  of  facts,  any  conscious  coloring  of  the  truth. 
Indeed,  I  am  rather  impressed  by  the  extraordinary  boldness  with  which  he 
often  gives  the  naked  facts,  and  still  calmly  upholds  a  theory  which  to  ordinary 
minds  would  seem  absolutely  incompatible  with  their  existence.  It  appears  to 
be  enough  if  he  once  makes  up  his  mind  to  dislike,  a  personage  or  a  race.  Let 
the  facts  be  as  they  may,  Mr.  Fronde  will  still  explain  them  to  the  discredit  of 
the  object  of  his  antipathy.  His  mode  of  dealing  with  the  characters  and  ;ic- 
tions  of  those  he  detests,  might  remind  one  of  the  manner  in  which  the  discon- 
tented subjects  of  the  perplexed  prince  in  "Rabagas"  explain  every  act  of 
their  good-natured  ruler :  "Je  donne  un  bal — luxe  effrene !  Pas  de  bal — quelle 
avarice!  Je  passe  une  revue — intimidation  militaire!  Je  n'en  passe  pas — je 
crains  r esprit  des  troupes!  Des  petards  a  ma  fete — 1'argent  du  peuple  en  fu- 
mce!  Pas  de  petards — rien  pour  les  plaisirs  du  peuple!  Je  me  porte  bien — 
1'oisivite!  Je  me  porte  mal — la  debauche!  Je  batis—  gaspillage!  Je  ne  hiltis 
pas — et  le  proletaire  ?  " 

However  that  may  be,  it  is  certain  that  the  "  History  "  placed  Mr.  Froude 
in  the  veiy  front  rank  of  English  authors.     He  had  made  a  path  for  himself. 


226  MR.  JAMES  ANTHONY  FROUDK 

He  refused  to  accept  the  thought  of  what  is  commonly  called  a  science  of  his- 
tory, although  his  own  method  of  evolving  his  narrative  is  very  often  in  faith- 
ful conformity  with  the  principles  of  that  science.  He  nad  written  about  polit- 
ical economy,  in  the  very  opening  of  his  first  volume,  in  a  manner  which,  if  it 
did  not  imply  an  actual  contempt  for  the  doctrines  of  that  science,  yet  certainly 
showed  an  impatience  of  its  rule  which  aroused  the  anger  of  the  economists.  '  He 
claimed  a  reversal  of  the  universal  decision  of  modern  history  as  to  the  char- 
acter of  Henry  VIII.  He  assailed  one  of  the  English  Protestant's  articles 
of  faith  when  he  denied  the  virtue  of  Anne  Boleyn.  He  made  mistakes  and 
confessed  them,  and  went  to  work  again.  The  opening  of  the  Spanish  archives 
in  the  castle  of  Simancas  flooded  him  with  new  lights  and  required  a  recon- 
struction of  much  that  he  had  done.  The  progress  of  his  work  became  one  of 
the  literary  phenomena  of  the  age.  All  eyes  were  on  it.  The  rich  romantic 
splendor  of  the  style,  the  singular  power  and  impressiveness  of  the  historical 
portraits,  fascinated  everybody.  Orthodox  Protestants  looked  on  him  as  a  sort 
of  infidel  or  pagan,  despite  his  admiration  for  Queen  Bess,  because,  with  all  his 
admiration,  lie  exposed  her  meannesses  and  her  falsehoods  with  unsparing 
hand.  Catholics  insisted  on  regarding  him  as  a  mere  bigot  of  Protestantism, 
although  he  condemned  Anne  Boleyn.  Mr.  Froude  has  always  shown  a  re- 
markable freedom  from  prejudice  and  bigotry.  Some  of  his  closest  friends  are 
Catholics  and  Irishmen.  I  remember  a  little  personal  instance  of  liberality  on 
his  part  which  is  perhaps  worth  mentioning.  There  was  an  official  in  the 
Record  or  State  Paper  Office  of  England  who  had  become  a  Roman  Catholic, 
and  was,  like  most  English  Catholics,  especially  if  converts,  rather  bigoted  and 
zealous.  This  gentleman,  Mr.  Turnbull,  happened  to  be  employed  some  years 
ago  in  arranging,  copying,  and  calendaring  the  Elizabethan  State  papers. 
The  Evangelical  Alliance  Society  got  up  a  cry  against  him.  They  insisted 
that  to  employ  a  Roman  Catholic  in  such  a  task  was  only  to  place  in  his  hands 
the  means  of  falsifying  a  most  important  period  of  English  history,  and  they 
argued  that  the  temptation  would  be  too  strong  for  :*ry  man  like  Mr.  Turnbull 
to  resist.  There  sprang  up  one  of  those  painful  and  ignoble  disputations  which 
are  even  still  only  too  common  in  England  when  religious  bigotry  gets  a  chance 
of  raising  an  alarm.  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  so  influential  a  journal  as  the 
"  Athenseum  "  joined  in  the  clamor  for  the  dismissal  of  Mr.  Turnbull,  who  was 
not  accused  of  having  done  anything  wrong,  but  only  of  being  placed  in  a  po- 
sition which  might  perhaps  tempt  some  base  creatures  to  do  wrong.  Mr. 
Turnbull  was  a  gentleman  of  the  highest  honor,  and,  unfortunately  for  himself, 
an  enthusiast  in  the  very  work  which  then  occupied  him.  Mr.  Froude  was 
then  engaged  in  studying  the  period  of  history  which  employed  Mr.  Turnbuirs 
labors.  The  opinions  of  the  two  men  were  utterly  at  variance.  Mr.  Turn- 
bull  must  have  thought  Froude's  work  in  the  rehabilitation  of  Henry  ^  III., 
and  the  glorification  of  Elizabeth  positively  detestable.  But  Mr.  Froude  bore 
public  testimony  to  the  honor  and  integrity  of  Mr.  Turnbull.  "  Mr.  Turn- 
bull,"  Froude  wrote,  "could  have  felt  no  sympathy  with  the  work  in  which  I 
was  engaged;  but  he  spared  no  pains  to  be  of  use  to  me,  and  in  admitting  me 
to  a  share  of  his  private  room  enabled  me  to  witness  the  ability  and  integrity 
with  which  he  discharged  his  own  duties.1'  Bigotry  prevailed,  however. 
Mr.  Turnbull  was  removed  from  his  place,  and  died  soon  after,  disappointed 
and  embittered.  But  Froude  the  man  is  not  Froude  the  author.  The  man  is 
free  from  dislikes  and  prejudices;  the  author  can  hardly  take  a  pen  in  his  hand 
without  being  -suffused  ^y  preju-15  33  an-3  dislikes.  Take  for  example  his 


MR.  JAMES  AXTIIOXY  FROUDE.  227 

way  of  dealing  with  Irish  questions,  not  merely  in  his  history,  but  ii?  his  mis- 
cellaneous writings.  Mr.  Froude  has  some  little  property  in  the  wesc  of  Ire- 
land, and  resides  there  for  a  short  time  every  year.  He  has  occasionally  de- 
tailed his  experiences,  and  commented  on  them,  in  the  pages  of  "  Fraser."  I 
shall  not  give  my  own  view  of  his  apparent  sentiments  toward  Ireland,  be- 
cause I  am  obviously  not  an  impartial  judge;  but  I  shall  take  the  opinion  of 
the  London  " Spectator,"  which  is.  The  "  Spectator  "  declares  that  "it  may 
be  not  unfairly  said  that  Mr.  Froude  simply  loathes  the  Irish  people;  not  con- 
sciously perhaps,  for  he  professes  the  reverse.  But  a  certain  bitter  grudge 
breaks  out  despite  his  will  now  and  then.  It  colors  all  his  tropes.  It  adds  a 
sting  to  the  casual  allusions  of  his  language.  When  he  wants  a  figure  of 
speech  to  express  the  relation  between  the  two  islands,  he  compares  the  Irish 
to  a  kennel  of  fox-hounds,  and  the  English  to  their  master,  and  declares  that 
what  the  Irish  want  is  a  master  who  knows  that  he  is  a  master  and  means  to 
continue  master."  In  his  occasional  studies  of  contemporary  Ireland  from  the 
window  of  his  shooting  lodge  in  Kerry,  Mr.  Froude  exhibits  the  same  strange 
mixture  of  candor  as  to  fact  and  blind  prejudice  as  to  conclusion  which 
so  oddly  characterizes  his  history.  He  recounts  deliberately  the  most  detest- 
able projects — he  himself  calls  them  "  detestable; "  the  word  is  his,  not  mine — 
avowed  to  him  by  the  agents  of  great  Irish  landlords,  and  yet  his  sympathy  is 
wholly  with  the  agents  and  against  the  occupiers.  He  tells  in  one  instance, 
with  perfect  delight,  of  a  mean  and  vulgar  exhibition  of  triumphant  malice 
which  he  says  an  agent,  a  friend  of  his,  paraded  for  the  humiliation  of  an 
evicted  and  contumacious  tenant.  The  "  Spectator  "  asks  in  wonder  whether 
it  can  be  possible  that  "Mr.  Froude,  an  English  gentleman  by  birth  and  edu- 
cation, an  Oxford  fellow,  is  not  ashamed  to  relate  this  act  as  an  heroic  feat?  " 
Indeed,  Mr.  Froude  seems  to  associate  in  Ireland  only  with  the  "agent"  class, 
and  to  take  all  his  views  of  things  from  them.  His  testimony  is  therefore 
about  as  valuable  as  that  of  a  foreigner  who  twelve  or  fifteen  years  ago  should 
have  taken  his  opinions  as  to  slavery  in  the  South  from  the  judgment  and  con- 
versation of  the  plantation  overseers.  The  "  Spectator  "  observed,  with  calm  se- 
verity, that  Mr.  Froude's  unlucky  accounts  of  his  Irish  experiences  were  "  a 
comical  example  of  the  way  in  which  an  acute  and  profound  mind  can  become 
dull  to  the  sense  of  what  is  manly,  just,  and  generous,  by  the  mere  atmosphere 
of  association."  Let  me  say  that  I  am  convinced,  however,  that  all  this  blind 
and  unmanly  prejudice  is  purely  literary ;  that  it  is  taken  up  and  laid  aside 
with  the  pen.  As  I  have  already  said,  some  of  Mr.  Froude's  closest  friends  are 
Irishmen — men  who  are  incapable  of  associating  with  any  one,  however  emi- 
nent, who  really  felt  the  coarse  and  bitter  hatred  to  their  country  which  Mr. 
Froude  in  his  wilder  moments  allows  his  too  fluent  pen  to  express.  In  fact 
Mr.  Froude  is  nothing  of  a  philosopher.  He  settles  every  question  easily  and 
off  hand  by  reference  to  what  Stuart  Mill  well  calls  the  resource  of  the  lazy — 
the  theory  of  race.  Celts  are  all  wrong  and  Anglo-Saxons  are  all  right,  and 
there  is  an  end  of  it.  If  he  has  any  philosophy  and  science  of  history,  it  is  this. 
It  explains  everything  and  reconciles  all  seeming  contradictions.  Nothing  can 
be  at  once  more  comprehensive  and  more  simple.  But  there  is  still  some- 
thing to  be  added  to  this  story  of  Mr.  Froude's  Irish  experiences;  and  I  men- 
tion the  whole  thing  only  to  illustrate  the  peculiar  character  of  Mr.  Froude'a 
emotional  temperament,  which  so  often  renders  him  untrustworthy  as  a  his- 
torian. In  the  particular  instance  on  which  the  "Spectator"  commented,  it 
turned  out  that  Mr.  Froude  was  entirely  mistaken.  He  had  misunderstood 


228  MR.  JAMES  ANTHONY  FROUDE. 

from  beginning  to  end  what  his  friend  the  agent  told  him.  The  agent,  the 
landlord  (a  peer  of  the  realm),  and  others  hastened  to  contradict  the  historian 
There  never  had  been  any  such  eviction  or  any  such  offensive  display.  Mr 
Fronde  himself  wrote  to  acknowledge  publicly  that  he  had  been  entirely  mis- 
taken. He  seemed  indeed  to  have  always  had  some  doubt  of  the  story  he  was 
publishing;  for  he  sent  a  proof  of  the  page  to  the  agent  "  to  be  corrected  in  ca,se 
L  had  misunderstood  him."  But  the  agent's  alterations,  "  unluckily,  did  not 
reach  me  in  time;  "  and  as  Mr.  Fronde  could  not  wait  for  the  truth,  he  published 
the  error.  Thus  indeed  is  history  written !  This  was  Mr.  Fronde's  published 
%-ersion  of  a  statement  made  viva  voce  to  himself;  and  his  version  was  wrong 
in  every  particular — in  fact,  in  substance,  in  detail,  in  purport,  in  everything ! 
I  venture  to  think  that  this  little  incident  is  eminently  characteristic,  and 
throws  a  strong  light  on  some  of  the  errors  of  the  "History  of  England." 

Mr.  Froude  has  taken  little  or  no  active  part  in  English  politics.  I  do  not 
remember  his  having  made  any  sign  of  personal  sympathy  one  way  or  the  other 
with  any  of  the  great  domestic  movements  which  have  stirred  England  in  my 
time.  I  presume  that  he  is  what  would  be  generally  called  a  Liberal ;  at  least 
it  is  simply  impossible  that  he  could  be  a  Tory.  But  I  doubt  if  he  could 
very  distinctly  "  place  himself,"  as  the  American  phrase  is,  with  regard  to 
most  of  the  political  contentions  of  the  time.  I  cannot  call  Mr.  Froude  a 
philosophical  Radical;  for  the  idea  which  that  suggests  is  of  a  school  of 
thought  and  a  system  of  training  quite  different  from  his,  even  if  his  tenden- 
cies could  possibly  be  called  Radical.  It  is  rather  a  pity  that  so  much  of  the 
best  and  clearest  literary  intellect  of  England  should  be  so  entirely  withdrawn 
from  the  practical  study  of  contemporary  politics.  No  sensible  person  could 
ask  a  man  like  Mr.  Froude  to  neglect  his  special  work,  that  for  which  he  has  a 
vocation  and  genius,  for  the  business  of  political  life.  But  perhaps  a  better  at- 
tompt  might  be  made  by  him  and  others  of  our  leading  authors  to  fulfil  the 
conditions  of  the  German  proverb  which  recommends  that  the  one  thing  shall 
be  done  and  the  other  not  left  undone.  Mr.  Froude  has  taken  a  more  marked 
interest  in  the  quasi-political  question  lately  raised  touching  the  connection  be- 
tween England  and  her  colonies.  Of  recent  years  a  party  lias  been  growing 
up  in  England  who  advocate  emphatically  the  doctrine  that  the  business  of 
this  country  is  to  educate  her  colonies  for  emancipation.  These  men  believe 
that  as  time  goes  on  it  will  become  more  and  more  difficult  to  retain  even  a 
nominal  connection  between  distant  colonies  and  the  parent  country.  The  Do- 
minion of  Canada  and  the  Australian  colonies,  both  separated  by  oceans  from 
England,  are  now  practically  independent.  They  have  their  own  parl'ameiiLs 
and  make  their  own  laws;  but  England  sends  out  a  governor,  and  the  gov- 
ernor has  still  a  nominal  control  indeed,  which  in  some  rare  cases  ho  stil!  ex- 
ercises. Now  wjiat  is  to  be  the  tendency  of  the  future?  Will  this  practical 
independence  tend  to  bind  the  colonial  system  more  strongly  up  into  that  of 
the  central  empire,  as  the  practical  independence  of  the  American  or  the  Swiss 
States  keeps  them  together?  Or  is  the  time  inevitable  when  the  slight  bond 
must  be  severed  altogether  and  the  great  colonies  at  last  declare  their  indepen- 
dence? Would  it,  for  example,  be  possible  always  to  maintain  the  American 
Union  if  several  thousand  miles  of  ocean  divided  California  in  one  direction 
from  Washington,  and  several  thousand  miles  of  another  ocean  lay  between 
Washington  and  the  South?  This  is  the  sort  of  question  political  parties  m 
England  have  lately  been  asking  themselves.  One  party,  mainly  under  an  im- 
pulse once  given  by  a  chance  alliance  between  the  Manchester  school  and  (Jold- 
win  Smith,  affirm  boldly  that  ultimate  separation  is  inevitable,  and  that  we  ought 


MR.  JAMES  AXTHOXY  FROUDE.  22C 

to  begin  to  prepare  ourselves  and  the  colonies  for  it.  This  party  made  great 
way  for  awhile.  They  said  loudly,  they  announced  as  a  principle,  that  which 
had  been  growing  vaguely  up  in  many  minds,  and  which  one  or  two  states- 
men had  long  before  put  into  actual  form.  More  than  twelve  years  ago  Mi- 
Gladstone  delivered  a  lecture  on  our  colonial  system  which  plainly  pointed  to 
this  ultimate  severance  and  bade  us  prepare  for  it.  Mr.  Lowe,  the  present 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  himself  an  old  colonist,  had  talked  somewhat 
cynically  in  the  same  way.  Mr.  Bright  was  well  known  to  favor  the  idea;  so 
was  Mr.  Mill.  With  the  sudden  and  direct  impulse  given  by  Mr.  Goldwin 
Smith,  the  thought  seemed  to  be  catching  fire.  England  had  voluntarily  given 
up  the  Ionian  Islands  to  Greece;  there  was  talk  of  her  restoring  Gibraltar  to 
Spain.  Mr.  Lowe  had  spoken  in  the  House  of  Commons  with  utter  contempt 
of  those  who  thought  it  would  be  possible  to  hold  Canada  in  the  event  of  a  war 
Avith  the  United  States,  Governors  of  colonies  actually  began  to  warn  their 
population  that  the  preparation  for  independence  had  better  begin.  Suddenly 
a  reaction  set  in.  A  class  of  writers  and  speakers  came  up  to  the  front  who 
argued  that  the  colonies  were  part  of  England's  very  life  system ;  that  they 
were  her  friends,  and  might  be  her  strength;  that  it  was  only  her  fault  if  she 
had  neglected  them  ;  and  that  the  natural  tendency  was  to  cohesion  rather  than 
dissolution.  This  party  roused  at  once  the  sympathy  of  that  large  class  of  peo- 
ple Avho,  knowing  and  caring  nothing  about  the  political  and  philosophical 
aspects  of  the  question,  thought  it  somehow  a  degradation  to  England,  a  token 
of  decay,  a  confession  of  decrepitude,  that  there  should  be  any  talk  of  the  sev- 
erance of  her  colonies.  Between  the  two,  the  tide  of  separatist  feeling  has 
decidedly  been  rolled  back  for  the  present.  The  humor  of  the  present  day  is 
to  devise  means — schemes  of  federation  or  federative  representation  for  ex- 
ample— whereby  the  colonies  may  still  be  kept  in  cohesion  with  England. 
Now,  among  the  men  of  intellect  who  have  stimulated  and  fostered  this  reac- 
tionary movement,  if  it  be  so — at  all  events,  this  movement  toward  the  retention 
of  the  colonies — Mr.  Fronde  has  been  a  leading  influence.  He  has  advocated 
such  a  policy  himself,  and  he  has  instilled  it  into  the  minds  of  others.  He  has 
formed  silently  a  little  school  who  take  their  doctrines  from  him  and  expand  them. 
The  colonial  question  has  become  popular  and  powerful.  We  have  every  now 
and  then  colonial  conferences  held  in  London,  at  which  even-body  who  has  any 
manner  of  suggestion  to  make,  or  crotchet  to  air,  touching  the  improvement  or 
development  of  our  colonial  system,  goes  and  delivers  his  speech  independently 
of  everybody  else.  In  the  House  of  Commons  the  party  is  not  yet  very  strong; 
but  if  it  had  a  leader  there,  it  would  undoubtedly  be  powerful.  There  is  even 
already  a  visible  anxiety  on  the  part  of  cabinet  ministers  to  drop  all  allusion 
to  the  fact  that  they  once  talked  of  preparing  the  colonies  for  independence. 
We  now  find  that  it  is  regarded  as  unpatriotic,  un-English,  jmgrateful,  and  I 
know  not  what,  to  say  a  word  about  a  possible  severance,  at  any  time,  between 
tlu  parent  country  and  her  colonies.  In  one  of  Mr.  Disraeli's  novels  a  politi 
en.  party,  hard  up  for  a  captivating  and  popular  watchword,  is  thrown  into 
ecstasies  when  somebody  invents  the  cry  of  "  Our  young  Queen  and  our  old 
Constitution."  I  think  the  cry  of  "  Our  young  colonies  and  our  old  Consti- 
tution" would  be  almost  as  taking  now.  It  is  curious,  however,  to  note  how 
both  the  movement  and  the  reaction  came  from  scholars  and  literary  men — not 
from  politicians  or  journalists.  Many  eminent  men  had  talked  of  gradually 
preparing  the  colonies  for  independence ;  but  the  talk  never  became  an  impulse 
and  a  political  movement  until  it  came  from  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith.  On  the 
other  hand,  countless  vociferous  persons  had  always  been  bawling  out  that 


230  MR.  JAMES  ANTHONY  FROUDE. 

England  must  never  part  with  a  rock  on  which  her  flag  had  waved ;  but  all 
this  sort  of  thing  nad  no  effect  until  Mr.  Froiule  and  his  school  inaugurated 
the  definite  movement  of  reaction.  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith  sent  the  ball  flying  so 
far  in  one  direction,  that  it  seemed  almost  certain  to  reach  the  limit  of  the 
field.  Mr.  Fronde  suddenly  caught  it  and  sent  it  flying  back  the  way  it  had 
come,  and  beyond  the  hand  which  had  originally  driven  it  forth.  It  is  not 
often  that  the  ideas  of  "  literary  "  men  have  so  much  of  positive  influence  over 
practical  controversy  in  England. 

For  a  long  time  Mr.  Fronde  has  been  the  editor  of  "  Fraser's  Magazine,"  a 
periodical  which  I  need  not  say  holds  a  high  position,  and  to  which  the  editor 
has  contributed  some  of  trie  finest  of  his  shorter  writings.  He  is  assisted  in 
the  work  of  editing  by  Mr.  William  Alliugham,  who  is  best  known  as  a 
young  poet  of  great  promise,  and  who  is  probably  the  closest  personal  friend 
of  Alfred  Tennyson.  "  Fraser's  "  is  always  ready  to  open  its  columns  to  merit 
of  any  kind,  and  is  willing  to  put  before  the  public  bold  and  original  views  of 
many  political  questions  which  other  periodicals  would  shrink  from  admitting. 
As  a  rule  English  magazines,  even  when  they  acknowledge  a  dasli  of  the 
philosophic  in  them,  are  very  reluctant  to  give  a  place  to  opinions,  however 
honestly  entertained,  which  differ  in  any  marked  degree  from  those  of  society 
at  large.  The  "Fortnightly  Review"  may  be  almost  regarded  as  unique  in  its 
principle  of  admitting  any  expression  of  opinion  which  has  genuineness  and 
value  in  it,  without  regard  to  its  accordance  with  public  sentiment,  or  even 
to  its  inherent  soundness.  "Fraser,"  of  course,  makes  no  pretension  to  such 
deliberate  boldness.  But  "  Fraser  "  will  now  and  then  venture  to  put  in  an 
article,  even  from  an  uninfluential  hand,  which  goes  directly  in  the  teetli  of 
accepted  and  orthodox  political  opinion.  For  example,  it  is  not  many  months 
since  it  published  an  article  written  by  an  English  working  man  ("  The  Jour- 
neyman Engineer,"  a  sort  of  celebrity  in  his  way)  to  prove  that  republicanism 
is  becoming  the  creed  of  the  English  artisan.  Now,  in  any  English  magazine 
which  professes  to  be  respectable,  it  is  almost  as  hazardous  a  thing  to  speak  of 
republicanism  in  England  as  to  speak  of  something  indecent  or  blasphemous. 
"  Fraser  "  also  made  itself  conspicuous  some  years  ago  as  a  bold  and  perse- 
vering advocate  of  army  reform,  and  ventured  to  press  certain  schemes  of 
change  which  then  seemed  either  revolutionary  or  impossible,  but  which  since 
then  have  been  quietly  realized. 

I  think  I  have  given  a  tolerably  accurate  estimate  of  Mr.  Fronde's  public 
work  in  England.  I  have  never  heard  him  make  a  speech  or  deliver  a  lecture, 
and  therefore  cannot  conjecture  how  far  he  is  likely  to  impress  an  audience 
with  the  manner  of  his  discourse ;  but  the  matter  can  hardly  fail  to  be  sug- 
gestive, original,  and  striking.  I  can  foi'esee  sharp  controversy  and  broad 
differences  of  opinion  arising  out  of  his  lectures  in  the  United  States.  I  cannot 
imagine  their  being  received  with  indifference,  or  failing  to  hold  the  atten- 
tion of  the  public.  Mr.  Froude  is  a  great  literary  man,  if  not  strictly  a  great 
historian.  Of  course  every  one  must  rate  Fronde's  intellect  very  highly.  He  has 
imagination ;  he  has  that  sympathetic  and  dramatic  instinct  which  enables  a  man 
to  enter  into  the  emotions  and  motives,  the  likings  and  dislikings  of  the  people 
of  a  past  age.  His  style  is  penetrating  and  thrilling;  his  language  often  rises  tc 
the  dignity  of  a  poetic  eloquence.  The  figures  he  conjures  up  are  always  the 
semblances  of  real  men  and  women.  They  are  never  wax- work,  or  lay  figures, 
or  skeletons  clothed  in  words,  or  purple  rags  of  description  stuffed  out  with 
straw  into  an  awkward  likeness  to  the  human  form.  The  one  distinct  im- 
pression we  carry  away  from  Froudft's  history  id  that  of  the  living  reality  of 


MR.  JAMES  ANTHONY  FROUDE.  231 

his  figures.  In  Marlowe's  "  Faustus  "  the  Doctor  conjures  up  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  the  Emperor  a  procession  of  stately  and  beautiful  shadows  to  represent 
the  great  ones  of  the  past.  When  the  shadows  of  Alexander  the  Great  and  his 
favorite  pass  by,  the  Emperor  can  hardly  restrain  himself  from  rushing  to 
clasp  the  hero  in  his  arms,  and  has  to  be  reminded  by  the  wizard  that  "  these 
are  but  shadows  not  substantial."  Even  then  the  Emperor  can  scarcely  get 
over  his  impression  of  their  reality,  for  he  cries : 

I  have  heard  it  said 

That  this  fair  lady,  whilst  she  lived  on  earth, 
Had  on  her  neck  a  little  wart  or  mole; 

and  lo!  there  is  the  mark  on  the  neck  of  the  beautiful  form  which  floats 
across  his  field  of  vision.  Mr  Froude's  shadows  are  like  this :  so  deceptive, 
so  seemingly  vital  and  real ;  with  the  beauty  and  the  blot  alike  conspicuous ; 
with  the  pride  and  passion  of  the  hero,  and  the  heroine's  white  necK  and  the 
wart  on  it.  Mr.  Froude's  whole  soul,  in  fact,  is  in  the  human  beings  whom  he 
meets  as  he  unfolds  his  narrative.  He  is  not  an  historical  romancist,  as  some 
of  his  critics  have  called  him.  He  is  a  romantic  or  heroic  portrait  painter. 
He  lias  painted  pictures  on  his  pages  which  may  almost  compare  with  those 
of  Titian.  Their  glances  follow  you  and  haunt  you  like  the  wonderful  eyes 
of  Cresar  Borgia  or  the  soul-piercing  resignation  of  Beatrice  Cenci.  But  is 
Mr.  Froude  a  great  historian?  Despite  this  splendid  faculty,  nay,  perhaps, 
because  of  this,  he  wants  the  one  great  and  essential  quality  of  the  true  histo- 
rian, accuracy.  He  wants  altogether  the  cold,  patient,  stern  quality  which 
clings  to  facts — the  scientific  faculty.  His  narrative  never  stands  out  in  that 
"dry  light"  which  Bacon  so  commends,  the  light  of  undistorted  and  clear 
Truth.  The  temptations  to  the  man  with  a  gift  of  heroic  portrait-painting  are 
too  great  for  Mr.  Froude's  resistance.  His  genius  carries  him  away  and  be- 
comes his  master.  When  Titian  was  painting  his  Caesar  Borgia,  is  it  not  con- 
ceivable that  his  imagination  may  have  been  positively  inflamed  by  the  contrast 
between  the  physical  beauty  and  the  moral  guilt  of  the  man,  and  have  uncon- 
sciously heightened  the  contrast  by  making  the  pride  and  passion  lower  more 
darkly,  the  superb  brilliancy  of  the  eyes  burn  more  radiantly  than  might 
have  been  seen  in  real  life?  The  world  would  take  little  account  even  if  it 
were  to  know  that  some  of  the  portraits  it  admires  were  thus  idealized  by  the 
genius  of  the  painter;  but  the  historian  who  is  thus  led  away  is  open  to  a 
graver  charge.  It  seems  to  me  impossible  to  doubt  that  Mr.  Froude  has  more 
than  once  been  thus  ensnared  by  his  own  special  gift.  What  is  there  in  liter- 
ature more  powerful,  more  picturesque,  more  complete  and  dramatic  than 
Froude's  portrait  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots?  It  stands  out  and  glows  and  dark- 
ens with  all  the  glare  and  gloom  of  a  living  form,  that  now  appears  in  sun  and 
now  in  shadow.  It  is  almost  as  perfect  and  as  impressive  as  any  Titian.  But 
t-an  any  reasonable  person  doubt  that  the  picture  on  the  whole  is  a  dramatic 
and  not  an  historical  study?  Without  going  into  any  controversy  as  to  disputed 
facts — nay,  admitting  for  the  sake  of  argument  that  Mary  was  as  guilty  as 
Mr.  Froude  would  make  her — as  guilty,  I  mean,  in  act  and  deed — yet  it  is 
impossible  to  contend  with  any  show  of  reason  that  the  being  he  has  painted 
for  us  is  the  Mary  of  history  and  of  life.  To  us  his  Mary  now  is  a  reality.  We 
are  distinctly  acquainted  with  her ;  we  see  her  and  can  follow  her  movements. 
But  she  is  a  fable  and  might  be  an  impossibility  for  all  that.  The  poets  hav« 
made  many  physical  impossibilities  real  for  us  and  familiar  to  us.  The  form 
and  being  of  a  mermaid  are  not  one  whit  less  clear  and  distinct  to  us  than  the 
form  and  being  of  a  living  woman.  If  any  of  us  were  to  see  a  paint  Jug  of  a 


232  MR.  JAMES  ANTHONY  FROUDE. 

mermaid  with  scales  upon  her  neck,  or  with  feet,  he  would  resent  it  or  laugh 
rtt  it  as  an  inaccuracy,  just  as  if  he  saw  some  gross  anatomical  blunder  in  a 
picture  of  an  ordinary  man  or  woman.  Mr.  Froude  has  created  a  Mary  Queen 
of  Scots  as  the  poets  and  painters  have  created  a  mermaid.  He  has  made  her 
one  of  the  most  imposing  figures  in  our  modern  literature,  to  which  indeed 
she  is  an  important  addition.  So  of  his  Queen  Elizabeth;  so,  to  a  lesser  extent, 
of  his  Henry  VIII.,  because,  although  there  he  may  have  gone  even  further 
away  from  history,  yet  I  think  he  was  misled  rather  by  his  anxiety  to  prove  a 
theory  than  by  the  fascination  of  a  picture  growing  under  his  own  hands. 
Everything  becomes  for  the  hour  subordinate  to  this  passion  for  the  picturesque 
in  good  or  evil.  Mr.  Froude's  personal  integrity  and  candor  are  constantly 
coming  into  contradiction  with  this  artistic  temptation;  but  the  portrait  goes 
on  all  the  same,  lie  is  too  honest  and  candid  to  conceal  or  pervert  any  fact 
that  he  knows.  He  tells  everything  frankly,  but  continues  his  portrait.  It  may 
be  that  the  very  vices  Avhich  constitute  the  gloom  and  horror  of  this  portrait 
suddenly  prove  their  existence  in  the  character  of  the  person  who  was  chosen 
to  illustrate  the  brightness  and  glory  of  human  nature.  Mr.  Froude  is  not 
abashed.  He  frankly  states  the  facts;  shoAvs  how,  in  this  or  that  instance,  Truth 
did  tell  shocking  lies,  Mercy  ordered  several  massacres,  and  Virtue  fell  into  the 
ways  of  Messalina.  But  the  portraits  of  Truth,  Mercy,  and  Virtue  remain  as 
radiant  as  ever.  A  lover  of  art,  according  to  a  story  in  the  memoirs  of  Canova, 
was  so  struck  with  admiration  of  that  sculptor's  Venus  that  he  begged  to  be 
allowed  to  see  the  model.  The  artist  gratified  him ;  but  so  far  from  beholding 
a  rery  goddess  of  beauty  in  the  flesh,  he  only  saw  a  well-made,  rather  coarse- 
looking  woman.  The  sculptor,  seeing  his  disappointment,  explained  to  him 
that  the  hand  and  eye  of  the  artist,  as  they  work,  can  gradually  and  almost 
imperceptibly  change  the  model  from  that  which  it  is  in  the  flesh  to  that  •which 
it  ought  to  be  in  the  marble.  This  is  the  process  which  is  always  going  on  with 
Mr.  Froude  whenever  he  is  at  work  upon  some  model  in  which  for  love  or 
hate  he  takes  unusual  interest.  Therefore  the  historian  is  constantly  involving 
himself  in  a  welter  of  inconsistencies  and  errors  which  atfect  the  arrfst  in  no- 
wise. Henry  is  a  hero  on  one  page,  although  he  does  the  very  thing  which 
somebody  else  on  the  next  page  is  a  villain  for  even  attempting.  Elizabeth 
remains  a  prodigy  of  wisdom  and  honesty,  Mary  a  marvel  of  genius,  lust, 
cruelty,  and  falsehood,  although  in  every  other  chapter  the  author  frankly 
accumulates  instances  which  show  that  now  and  then  the  parts  seem  to  have 
been  exchanged;  and  it  often  becomes  as  hard  to  know,  by  any  tangible  evi- 
dence, which  is  truth  and  which  falsehood,  which  patriotism  and  which  selfish- 
ness, as  it  was  to  distinguish  the  true  Florimel  from  the  magical  counterfeit 
in  Spenser's  "  Faery  Queen." 

This  is  a  grave  and  a  great  fault;  and  unhappily  it  is  one  with  which  Mr. 
Froude  seems  to  have  been  thoroughly  inoculated.  It  goes  far  to  justify  the  dull 
and  literal  old  historians  of  the  school  of  Dryasdust,  who,  if  they  never  quick- 
ened an  event  into  life,  never  on  the  other  hand  deluded  the  mind  with  phan- 
toms. The  chroniclers  of  mere  facts  and  dates,  the  old  almanac-makers,  are 
weary  creatures;  but  one  finds  it  hard  to  condemn  them  to  mere  contempt 
when  he  sees  how  the  vivid  genius  of  a  man  like  Froude  can  lead  him  astray. 
Mr.  Froude's  finest  gift  is  his  greatest  defect  for  the  special  work  he  undertakes 
fo  do.  A  scholar,  a  thinker,  a  man  of  high  imagination,  a  man  likewise  of 
patient  labor,  he  is  above  all  things  a  romantic  portrait  painter;  and  the  spell 
hy  which  his  works  allure  us  is  therefore  the  spell  of  the  magician,  not  the 
power  of  the  calm  and  sober  teacher. 


SCIENCE  AND  ORTHODOXY  IN  ENGLAND. 


^T^HE  old  God  is  dead  above,  and  the  old  Devil  is  dead  below  ! " 

So  sang  Heinrich  Heine  in  one  of  his  peculiarly  cheerful  moods  ; 
and  I  do  not  know  that  any  words  could  paint  a  more  complete  picture  of  the 
utter  collapse  and  ruin  of  old  theologies  and  time-honored  faiths  and  supersii- 
tions.  Irreverent  and  even  impious  as  the  words  will  perhaps  appear  to  most 
minds,  it  is  probable  that  not  a  few  of  those  who  would  be  most  likely  to 
shudder  at  their  audacity  are  beginning  to  think  with  horror  that  the  condition  ot 
things  described  by  the  cynical  poet  is  being  rapidly  brought  about  by  the  doings 
of  modern  science.  Many  an  English  country  clergyman,  many  an  earnest  and 
pious  Dissenter,  must  have  felt  that  a  new  and  awful  era  had  arrived — that  a 
modern  war  of  Titans  against  Heaven  was  going  on,  when  such  discourses  as 
Professor  Huxley's  famous  Protoplasm  lecture  could  be  delivered  by  a  man  of 
the  highest  reputation,  and  could  be  received  by  nearly  all  the  world  with,  at 
least,  a  respectful  consideration.  In  fact,  the  delivery  of  such  discourses  does 
indicate  a  quite  new  ordeal  for  old-fashioned  orthodoxy,  and  an  ordeal  which 
seems  to  me  far  severer  than  any  through  which  it  has  yet  passed.  It  would  be 
impossible  to  exaggerate  the  importance  of  the  struggle  which  is  now  openly 
carried  on  between  Science  and  Orthodox  Theology.  I  need  hardly  say  pet- 
haps  that  I  utterly  repudiate  the  use  of  any  such  absurd  and  unmeaning  lan- 
guage as  that  which  speaks  of  a  controversy  between  science  and  religion. 
One  might  as  well  talk  of  a  conflict  between  fact  and  truth  ;  or  between  truth 
and  virtue.  But  orthodox  theology  in  England,  whether  it  be  right  or  wrong,  is 
certainly  a  very  different  thing  from  religion.  Were  it  wholly  and  eternally  true 
it  could  still  only  bear  the  same  relation  to  religion  that  geography  bears  to  the 
earth,  astronomy  to  the  sidereal  system,  the  words  describing  to  the  thing  de- 
scribed. I  may  therefore  hope  not  to  be  at  once  set  down  as  an  irreligious  person, 
merely  because  I  venture  to  describe  the  war  indirectly  waged  against  orthodox 
theology,  by  a  new  school  of  English  scientific  men,  as  the  severest  trial  that 
system  has  ever  yet  had  to  encounter,  and  one  through  which  it  can  hardly  by 
any  possibility  pass  wholly  unscathed. 

In  describing  briefly  and  generally  this  new  school  of  English  science,  and 
some  of  its  leading  scholars,  I  should  say  that  I  do  so  merely  from  the  outside. 
I  am  not  a  scientific  man  professionally ;  and,  even  as  an  amateur,  can  only  pre- 
tend to  very  slight  attainment.  But  1  have  been  on  the  scene  of  controversy, 
have  looked  over  the  field,  and  studied  the  bearing  of  the  leading  combatants. 
When  Cressida  had  seen  the  chiefs  of  the  Trojan  army  pass  before  her  and 
had  each  pointed  out  to  her  and  described,  she  could  probably  have  told 
a  stranger  something  worth  his  listening  to,  although  she  knew  nothing  of  the 
great  art  of  war.  Only  on  something  of  the  same  ground  do  I  venture  to  ask 
for  any  attention  from  American  readers,  when  I  say  something  about  the  class 
of  scientific  men  who  have  recently  sprung  up  in  England,  and  of  whom  one  of 
the  most  distinguished  and  one  of  the  most  aggressive  has  just  been  elected 
President  of  the  British  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science. 

This  school  is  peculiarly  English.  So  far  as  I  know,  it  owes  nothing  directly 
and  distinctly  to  the  intellectual  initiative  of  any  other  country.  Both  in  meta- 
physical and  in  practical  science  there  has  been  a  sudden  and  powerful  awaken- 


2C4  SCIENCE  AND  ORTHODOXY  IN  ENGLAND. 

ing,  or  perhaps  I  should  say  renaissance,  in  England  lately.  Three  or  four  years 
ago  Stuart  Mill  wrote  that  the  sceptre  of  psychology  had  again  passed  over  to 
England  ;  and  it  seems  to  me  not  too  much  to  say  that  England  now  likewise 
holds  the  sceptre  of  natural  science.  It  is  evident  to  every  one  that  the  leaders 
of  this  new  school  stand  in  antagonism  which  is  decided,  if  not  direct,  to  the 
teachings  of  orthodox  theology. 

The  recent  election  of  Professor  Huxley  as  President  of  the  British  Associa- 
tion was  accepted  universally  as  a  triumph  over  the  orthodox  party.  Professor 
Owen,  who  undoubtedly  possesses  one  of  the  broadest  and  keenest  scientific  in- 
tellects of  the  age,  has  lately  been  pushed  aside  and  has  fallen  into  something  like 
comparative  obscurity  because  he  could  not,  or  would  not,  see  his  way  into  the 
dangerous  fields  opened  up  by  his  younger  and  bolder  rivals.  Professor  Owen  held 
on  as  long  as  ever  he  could  to  orthodoxy.  He  made  heavy  intellectual  sacrifices  at 
its  altar.  I  do  not  quite  know  whether  in  the  end  it  was  he  who  first  gave  the  cold 
shoulder  to  orthodoxy,  or  orthodoxy  which  first  repudiated  him.  But  it  is  cer- 
tain that  he  no  longer  stands  out  conspicuous  and  ardent  as  the  great  opponent 
of  Darwin  and  Huxley.  He  has,  in  fact,  receded  so  much  from  his  old  ground 
that  one  finds  it  difficult  now  to  know  where  to  place  him  ;  and  perhaps  it  will  be 
better  to  regard  him  as  out  of  the  controversy  altogether.  If  he  had  done  less 
for  orthodoxy,  where  his  labors  were  vain,  he  might  have  done  much  more  for  sci- 
ence, where  his  toil  would  always  have  been  fruitful.  Undoubtedly,  he  is  one  of 
the  greatest  naturalists  since  Cuvier ;  his  contributions  toward  the  facts  and 
data  of  science  have  been  valuable  beyond  all  estimation  ;  his  practical  labors  in 
the  British  Museum  would  alone  earn  for  him  the  gratitude  of  all  students.  Owen 
is,  or  was,  to  my  mind,  the  very  perfection  of  a  scientific  lecturer.  The  easy 
flow  of  simple,  expressive  language,  the  luminous  arrangement  and  style  which 
made  the  profoundest  exposition  intelligible,  the  captivating  variety  of  illustration, 
the  clear,  well-modulated  voice,  the  self-possessed  and  graceful  manner — all  these 
were  attributes  which  made  Owen  a  delightful  lecturer,  although  he  put  forward 
no  pretensions  to  rhetorical  skill  or  to  eloquence  of  any  very  high  order.  But 
while  there  can  hardly  have  been  any  recent  falling  off  in  Owen's  intellectual 
powers,  yet  it  is  certain  that  he  was  more  thought  of,  that  he  occupied  a  higher 
place  in  the  public  esteem,  some  half  dozen  years  ago  than  he  now  does.  I  think 
there  has  been  a  general  impression  of  late  years  that  in  the  controversy  between 
theology  and  science,  Owen  was  not  to  be  relied  upon  implicitly.  People 
thought  that  he  was  trying  to  sit  on  the  two  stools  ;  to  run  with  the  theological 
hare,  and  hold  with  the  scientific  hounds.  Indeed,  Owen  is  eminently  a  respect- 
able, a  courtly  savant.  He  does  not  love  to  run  tilt  against  the  prevailing  opin- 
ion of  the  influential  classes,  or  to  forfeit  the  confidence  and  esteem  of  "  society.' 
He  loves — so  people  say — the  company  of  the  titled  and  the  great,  and  prefers,  per- 
haps, to  walk  with  Sir  Duke  than  with  humble  Sir  Scholar.  All  things  considered, 
we  may  regard  him  as  out  of  the  present  controversy,  and,  perhaps,  as  left  be- 
hind by  it  and  by  the  opinions  which  have  created  it.  The  orthodox  do  not  seem 
much  beholden  to  him.  Only  two  or  three  years  ago  an  orthodox  association 
for  which  Owen  had  delivered  a  scientific  lecture,  refused  on  theological  grounds 
to  print  the  discourse  in  their  regular  volume.  On  the  other  hand,  the  younger 
and  more  ardent  savans  and  scholars  sneer  at  him,  and  refuse  to  give  him  credit 
for  sincerity  at  the  expense  of  his  intelligence.  They  believe  that  if  he  chose  to 
speak  out,  if  he  had  the  courage  of  his  opinions,  he  would  say  as  they  do.  He 
has  ceased  to  be  their  opponent,  but  he  is  not  upon  their  side  ;  he  is  no  longer 
the  champion  of  pure  orthodoxy,  but  he  has  never  pronounced  openly  against  it. 


SCIENCE  AND  ORTHODOXY  IN  ENGLAND.  -So 

Flippant  people  allude   to  him  as  an  old  fogy;  let  us  say  more  decently  thai 
Richard  Owen  already  belongs  to  the  past. 

"  Free-thinking"  has  never  been  in  England  a  very  formidable  rival  of  ortho- 
dox theology.  Perhaps  there  is  something  in  the  practical  nature  of  the  average 
English  mind  which  makes  it  indifferent  and  apathetic  to  mere  speculation. 
The  ordinary  Englishmen  understands  being  a  Churchman  or  a  Dissenter,  a 
Roman  Catholic  or  a  no-Popery  man  ;  but  he  hardly  understands  how  people  can 
be  got  to  concern  themselves  with  mere  sceptical  speculation.  Writings  like 
those  of  Rousseau,  for  example,  never  could  have  produced  in  England  anything 
like  the  effect  they  wrought  in  France.  Of  late  years  the  effects  of  "free-think- 
ing "(I  am  using  the  phrase  merely  in  the  vulgar  sense)  have  been  poor,  feeble 
and  uninfluential — wholly  indeed  without  influence  over  the  educated  classes  of 
society.  A  certain  limited  and  transient  influence  was  once  maintained  over  a 
small  surface  of  society  by  the  speeches  and  the  writings  of  George  Jacob  Holy- 
oake.  Holyoake  avowed  himself  an  Atheist,  conducted  a  paper  called  (I  think) 
"  The  Reasoner,"  was  prosecuted  under  the  terms  of  a  foolish  and  discreditable 
act  of  Parliament,  and  had  for  a  time  something  of  notoriety  and  popular  power. 
But  Holyoake,  a  man  of  pure  character  and  gentle  manners,  is  devoid  of  anything 
like  commanding  ability,  has  no  gleam  of  oratorical  power,  and  is  intellectually  un- 
reliable and  vacillating.  Under  no  conceivable  circumstances  could  he  exercise 
any  strong  or  permanent  control  over  the  mind  or  the  heart  of  an  age  :  and  he 
has  of  late  somewhat  modified  his  opinions,  and  has  greatly  altered  his  sphere  of 
action,  preferring  to  be  a  political  and  social  reformer  in  a  small  and  modest 
way  to  the  barren  task  of  endeavoring  to  uproot  religious  belief  by  arguments 
evolved  from  the  depth  of  the  moral  consciousness.  Holyoake,  the  Atheist, 
may  therefore  be  said  to  have  faded  away. 

His  old  place  has  lately  been  taken  by  a  noisier,  more  egotistic  and  robust  sort 
of  person,  a  young  man  named  Bradlaugh,  who  at  onetime  dubbed  himself 
"  Iconoclast,"  and,  bearing  that  ambitious  title,  used  to  harangue  knots  of  working 
men  in  the  North  of  England  with  the  most  audacious  of  free-thinking  rhetoric. 
Bradlaugh  has  a  certain  kind  of  brassy,  stentorian  eloquence  and  a  degree  of 
reckless  self  conceit  which  almost  amount  to  a  conquering  quality.  But  he  has 
no  intellectual  capacity  sufficient  to  make  a  deep  mark  on  the  mind  of  any  sec- 
tion of  society  and  he  never  attempts,  so  far  as  I  knbw,  any  other  than  the  old, 
time-worn  arguments  against  orthodoxy  with  which  the  world  has  been  wearily 
familiar  since  the  days  of  Voltaire.  Indeed,  a  man  who  gravely  undertakes  to  prove 
by  argument  that  there  is  no  God,  places  himself  at  once  in  so  anomalous,  para- 
doxical and  ridiculous  a  position  that  it  is  a  marvel  the  absurdity  of  the  situa- 
tion does  not  strike  his  own  mind.  A  man  who  starts  with  the  reasonable  as- 
sumption that  belief  is  a  matter  of  evidence  and  then  goes  on  to  argue  that  a 
Being  does  not  exist  of  whose  non-existence  he  can  upon  his  own  ground  and 
pleading  know  absolutely  nothing,  is  not  likely  to  be  very  formidable  to  any  of 
his  antagonists.  Orthodox  theologians,  therefore,  are  little  concerned  about  men 
like  Bradlaugh — very  often  perhaps  are  ignorant  of  the  existence  of  any  such. 

I  only  mention  Holyoake  and  Bradlaugh  at  all  because  they  are  the  only  prom- 
inent agitators  of  this  kind  who  have  appeared  in  England  during  my  time.  I  do 
not  mean  to  speak  disparagingly  of  either  man.  Both  have  considerable  ab  li- 
ties  ;  both  are,  I  am  sure,  sincere  and  honest.  I  have  never  heard  anything  to 
the  disparagement  of  Bradlauglrs  character.  Holyoake  I  know  personally,  and 
esteem  highly.  But  their  influence  has  been  insignificant,  and  cannot  have  any 
long  duration.  I  only  speak  of  it  here  to  show  how  feeble  has  been  the  head  made 


236  SCIENCE  AND  ORTHODOXY  IN  ENGLAND. 

against  orthodoxy  in  England  by  professed  infidelity  in  our  time.  There  was,  in- 
deed, a  book  written  some  years  ago  by  a  man  of  higher  culture  than  Holyoake 
or  Bradlaugh,  and  which  made  a  bubble  or  two  of  sensation  at  the  time.  I  mean 
"  The  Creed  of  Christendom,"  by  William  Rathbone  Greg,  a  well-known  political 
and  philosophical  essayist,  who  wrote  largely  for  the  "Edinburgh  Review"  and  the 
"Westminster  Review"  and  more  lately  for  the  "  Pall  Mall  Gazette,"  and  has  now  a 
comfortable  place  under  government.  But  the  "  Creed  of  Christendom, "  though 
a  clever  book  in  its  way,  made  no  abiding  mark.  It  was  read  and  liked  by  those 
whose  opinions  it  expressed,  but  I  question  if  it  ever  made  one  single  convert  or 
suggested  a  doubt  to  a  truly  orthodox  mind.  I  mention  it  because  it  was  the 
only  work  of  what  is  called  a  directly  infidel  character,  not  pretending  to  a  scien- 
tific basis,  which  was  contributed  to  the  literature  of  English  philosophy  by  a 
man  of  high  culture  and  literary  reputation  during  my  memory.  It  will  be  un- 
derstood that  I  am  speaking  now  of  works  modeled  after  the  old  fashion  of  scep- 
tical controversy,  in  which  the  authors  make  it  tliear  avowed  and  main  purpose  to 
assail  the  logical  coherence  and  reasonableness  of  the  Christian  faith  by  argu- 
ments which,  sound  or  unsound,  can  be  brought  to  no  practical  test  and  settled 
by  no  possible  decision.  Such  works  may  be  influential  among  nations  which 
are  addicted  to  or  tolerant  of  mere  religious  speculation  ;  it  is  only  a  calling 
aloud  to  solitude  to  address  them  to  the  English  public.  Even  books  of  a  very 
high  intellectual  class,  such  for  example  as  Strauss's  "  Life  of  Jesus,"  are  trans- 
lated into  English  in  vain.  They  are  read  and  admired  by  those  already  pre- 
pared to  admire  and  eager  to  read  them — the  general  public  takes  no  heed  of 
them. 

I  have  ventured  into  this  digression  in  order  to  show  the  more  clearly  how 
important  must  be  the  influence  of  that  new  school  of  science  which  has  aroused 
such  a  commotion  among  the  devotees  of  English  orthodoxy.  There  is  not,  so 
far  as  I  know,  among  the  leading  scientific  men  of  the  new  school  one  single  pro- 
fessed infidel  in  the  old  fashioned  sense.  The  fundamental  difference  between 
them  and  the  orthodox  is  that  they  insist  upon  regarding  all  subjects  coming 
within  the  scope  of  human  knowledge  as  open  to  inquiry  and  to  be  settled  only 
upon  evidence.  I  suppose  a  day  will  come  when  people  will  wonder  that  a  scien- 
tific man,  living  in  the  England  of  the  nineteenth  century,  could  have  been  de- 
nounced from  pulpits  because  he  claimed  the  right  and  the  duty  to  follow  out 
his  scientific  investigations  whithersoever  they  should  lead  him.  Yet  I  am  not 
aware  that  anything  more  desperately  infidel  than  this  has  ever  been  urged  by 
our  modern  English  savans. 

Michel  Chevalier  tells  a  story  of  a  French  iconoclast  of  our  own  time  who 
devoted  himself  to  a  perpetual  war  against  what  he  considered  the  two  worst  su- 
perstitions of  the  age — belief  in  God  and  dislike  of  spiders.  This  aggressive 
sage  always  carried  about  with  him  a  golden  box  filled  with  the  pretty  and  favor- 
ite insects  I  have  mentioned  ;  and  whenever  he  happened  to  be  introduced  to  any 
new  acquaintance  he  invariably  plunged  at  once  into  the  questions — "  Do  you 
believe  in  a  God,  and  are  you  afraid  of  spiders  ? " — and  without  waiting  for  an  an- 
swer, he  instantly  demonstrated  his  own  superiority  to  at  least  one  conventional 
weakness  by  opening  his  box,  taking  out  a  spider,  and  swallowing  it.  I  think  a 
good  deal  of  the  old-fashioned  warfare  against  orthodoxy  had  something  of  this 
spider-bolting  aggressiveness  about  it.  It  assailed  men's  dearest  beliefs  in  the 
coarsest  manner,  and  it  had  commonly  only  horror  and  disgust  for  its  reward. 
There  is  nothing  of  this  spirit  among  the  leaders  of  English  scientific  philosophy 
to-day.  Not  merely  are  the  practically  scientific  men  free  from  it,  but  even  the 


SCIENCE  AND  ORTHODOXY  IN  ENGLAND.  • ^ 

men  who  are  called  in  a  sort  of  a  contemptuous  tone  "philosophers"  are  not  to 
be  accused  of  it.  Mill  and  Herbert  Spencer  have  as  little  of  it  as  Huxley  and 
Grove.  Indeed  the  scientific  men  are  nothing  more  or  less  than  earnest,  patient, 
devoted  inquirers,  seeking  out  the  truth  fearlessly,  and  resolute  to  follow  wher- 
ever she  invites.  Whenever  they  have  come  into  open  conflict  with  orthodoxy, 
it  may  be  safely  assumed  that  orthodoxy  threw  the  first  stone.  For  orthodoxy, 
with  a  keen  and  just  instinct,  detests  these  scientific  men.  The  Low  Church 
party,  the  great  mass  of  the  Dissenting  body  (excluding,  of  course,  Unitarians) 
have  been  their  uncompromising  opponents.  The  High  Church  party,  which, 
with  all  its  mediaeval  weaknesses  and  its  spiritual  reaction,  does  assuredly  boast 
among  its  leaders  some  high  and  noble  intellects,  and  among  all  its  classes  ear- 
nest, courageous  minds,  has,  on  the  contrary,  given,  for  the  most  part,  its  confi- 
dence and  its  attention  to  the  teachings  of  the  savans.  We  have  the  testimony 
of  Professor  Huxley  himself  to  the  fact  that  the  leading  minds  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  do  at  least  take  care  that  the  teachings  of  the  sa-vans  shall  be 
understood,  and  that  they  shall  be  combated,  if  at  all,  on  scientific  and  not  on 
theological  grounds. 

No  man  is  more  disliked  and  dreaded  by  the  orthodox  than  Thomas  Huxley. 
Darwin,  who  is  really  the  fans  et  origo  of  the  present  agitation,  is  hardly  more 
than  a  name  to  the  outer  world.  He  has  written  a  book,  and  that  is  all  the  pub- 
lic know  about  him.  He  never  descends  into  the  arena  of  open  controversy  ; 
we  never  read  of  him  in  the  newspapers.  I  know  of  no  instance  of  a  book  so 
famous  with  an  author  so  little  known.  Even  curiosity  does  not  seem  to  concern 
itself  about  the  individuality  of  Darwin,  whose  book  opened  up  a  new  era  of 
controversy,  spreading  all  over  the  world,  and  was  the  sensation  in  England  ot 
many  successive  seasons.  Herbert  Spencer,  indeed,  has  lived  for  a  long  time 
liardlv  noticed  or  known  by  the  average  English  public.  But  then  none  of  Spen- 
cer's books  ever  created  the  slightest  sensation  among  that  public,  and  three  out 
of  every  four  Englishmen  never  heard  of  the  man  or  the  books.  Herbert  Spen- 
cer is  infinitely  better  known  in  the  United  States  than  he  is  in  England,  although 
I  am  far  from  admitting  that  he  is  better  appreciated  even  here  than  by  those  of 
his  countrymen  who  are  at  all  acquainted  with  his  masterly,  his  unsurpassed, 
contributions  to  the  philosophy  of  the  world.  The  singular  fact  about  Darwin 
is  that  his  book  was  absolutely  the  rage  in  England  ;  everybody  was  bound  to 
read  it  or  at  least  to  talk  about  it  and  pretend  to  have  understood  it.  More  ex- 
citement was  aroused  by  it  than  even  by  Buckle's  "  History  of  Civilization  ;  "  it 
fluttered  the  petticoats  in  the  drawing-room  as  much  as  the  surplices  in  the  pul- 
pit ;  it  occupied  alike  the  attention  of  the  scholar  and  the  fribble,  the  divine  and 
the  schoolgirl.  Yet  the  author  kept  himself  in  complete  seclusion,  and,  for  some 
mysterious  reason  or  other,  public  curiosity  never  seemed  disposed  to  persecute 
him.  Therefore  the  theologians  seem  to  have  regarded  him  as  the  poet  does  the 
cuckoo,  rather  as  a  voice  in  the  air  than  as  a  living  creature  ;  and  they  have  not 
poured  out  much  of  their  anger  upon  him  personally.  But  Huxley  comes  down 
into  the  arena  of  public  controversy  and  is  a  familiar  and  formidable  figure  there 
Wherever  there  is  strife  there  is  Huxley.  Years  ago  he  came  into  the  field  al 
most  unknown  like  the  Disinherited  Knight  in  Scott's  immortal  romance  ;  and, 
while  the  good-natured  spectators  were  urging  him  to  turn  the  blunt  end  of  the 
lance  against  the  shield  of  the  least  formidable  opponent,  he  dashed  with  splendid 
recklessness,  and  with  spearpoint  forward,  against  the  buckler  of  Richard  Owen 
himself,  the  most  renowned  of  the  naturalists  of  England.  Indeed  Huxley  has 
the  soul  and  spirit  of  i  gallant  controversialist.  He  has  many  times  warned  the 


238  SCIENCE  AND  ORTHODOXY  IN  ENGLAND 

orthodox  champions  that  if  they  play  at  bowls  they  must  expect  rubbers  ;  and 
once  in  the  fight  he  never  spares.  He  has  a  happy  gift  of  shrewd  sense  and 
sarcasm  combined  ;  and,  indeed,  I  know  no  man  who  can  exhibit  a  sophism  as  a 
sophism  and  hold  it  up  to  contempt  and  laughter  more  clearly  and  effectively  in 
a  single  sentence  of  exhaustive  satire. 

It  would  be  wrong  to  regard  Huxley  merely  as  a  scientific  man.  He  is  like- 
wise a  literary  man,  a  writer.  What  he  writes  would  be  worth  reading  for  its 
style  and  its  expression  alone,  w-ere  it  of  no  scientific  authority  ;  whereas  we  all 
know  perfectly  well  that  scientific  men  generally  are  read  only  for  the  sake  of 
what  they  teach,  and  not  at  all  because  of  their  manner  of  teaching  it — rather  in- 
deed despite  of  their  manner  of  teaching  it.  Huxley  is  a  fascinating  writer,  and 
has  a  happy  way  of  pressing  continually  into  the  service  of  strictly  scientific  ex- 
position illustrations  caught  from  literature  and  art — even  from  popular  and 
light  literature.  He  has  a  gift  in  this  way  which  somewhat  resembles  that  pos- 
sessed by  a  very  different  man  belonging  to  a  very  different  class — I  mean 
Robert  Lowe,  the  present  English  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  who  owes  the 
greater  part  of  his  rhetorical  success  to  the  prodigality  of  varied  illustration  with 
which  he  illumines  his  speeches,  and  which  catches,  at  this  pointer  that,  the  atten- 
tion of  every  kind  of  listener.  Huxley  seems  to  understand  clearly  that  you  can 
never  make  scientific  doctrines  really  powerful  while  you  are  content  with  the 
ear  of  strictly  scientific  men.  He  cultivates,  therefore,  sedulously  arid  success- 
fully, the  literary  art  of  expression.  A  London  friend  of  mine,  who  has  had  long 
experience  in  the  editing  of  high-class  periodicals,  is  in  the  habit  of  affirming 
humorously  that  the  teachers  of  the  public  are  divided  into  two  classes  :  those 
who  know  something  and  cannot  write,  and  those  who  know  nothing  and  can 
write.  Every  literary  man,  especially  every  editor,  will  cordially  agree  with  me 
that  at  the  heart  of  this  humorous  extravagance  is  a  solid  kernel  of  truth.  •  Now, 
scientific  men  very  often  belong  to  the  class  of  those  who  know  something,  but 
cannot  write.  No  one,  however,  could  possibly  confound  Thomas  Huxley  with 
the  band  of  those  to  whom  the  gift  of  expression  is  denied.  He  is  a  vivid,  forci- 
ble, fascinating  writer.  His  style  as  a  lecturer  is  one  which,  for  me  at  least,  has 
a  special  charm.  It  is,  indeed,  devoid  of  any  effort  at  rhetorical  eloquence  ;  but 
it  has  all  the  eloquence  which  is  born  of  the  union  of  profound  thought  with 
simple  expression  and  luminous  diction.  There  is  not  much  of  the  poetic,  cer- 
tainly, about  him  ;  only  the  occasional  dramatic  vividness  of  his  illustrations  sug- 
gests the  existence  in  him  of  any  of  the  higher  imaginative  qualities.  I  think 
there  was  something  like  a  gleam  of  the  poetic  in  the  half  melancholy  half  humor- 
ous introduction  of  Balzac's  famous  "  Peau  de  Chagrin,"  into  the  Protoplasm 
lecture.  But  Huxley  as  a  rule  treads  only  the  firm  earth,  and  deliberately,  per- 
haps scornfuily,  rejects  any  attempts  and  aspirings  after  the  clouds.  His  mind  is 
in  this  way  far  more  rigidly  practical  than  that  even  of  Richard  Owen.  He  is 
never  eloquent  in  the  sense  in  which  Humboldt  for  example  was  so  often  elo- 
quent. Being  a  politician,  I  may  be  excused  for  borrowing  an  illustration  from 
the  political  arena,  and  saying  that  Huxley's  eloquence  is  like  that  of  Cobden  ; 
it  is  eloquence  only  because  it  is  so  simply  and  tersely  truthful.  The  whole  tone 
of  his  mind,  the  whole  tendency  of  his  philosophy,  may  be  observed  to  have  this 
character  of  quiet,  fearless,  and  practical  truthfulness.  No  seeker  after  truth 
could  be  more  earnest,  more  patient,  more  disinterested.  "  Dry  light,"  as  Bacon 
calls  it — light  uncolored  by  prejudice,  undimmed  by  illusion,  undistorted  by  inter- 
posing obstacle — is  all  that  Huxley  desires  to  have.  He  puts  no  bound  to  the 
range  of  human  inquiry.  Wherever  man  may  look,  there  let  him  look  earnestly 


SCIENCE  AND  ORTHODOXY  IN  ENGLAND.  239 

and  without  fear.  Truth  is  always  naked  and  not  ashamed.  The  modest,  self- 
denying  profession  of  Lessing  that  he  wanted  not  the  whole  truth,  and  only  asked 
to  be  allowed  the  pleasing  toil  of  investigation,  must  be  almost  unintelligible  to 
a  student  like  Huxley  ;  and  indeed  is  only  to  be  understood  by  any  active  in- 
quirer, on  condition  that  he  bears  in  mind  the  healthy  and  racy  delight  which  the 
mere  labor  of  intellectual  research  gave  to  Lessing's  vigorous  and  elastic  mind. 
No  subject  is  sacred  to  Huxley;  because  with  him  truth  is  more  sacred  than 
any  sphere  of  inquiry.  I  suppose  the  true  and  pure  knight  would  have  fearlessly 
penetrated  any  shrine  in  his  quest  of  the  Holy  Grail. 

Professor  Huxley's  nature  seems  to  me  to  have  been  cast  in  a  finer  mould  than 
that  of  Professor  TyndaU,  for  example.     Decidedly,  Tyndall  is  a  man  of  great 
ability  and  earnestness.     He  has  done,  perhaps,  more  practical  work  in  science 
than  Huxley  has  ;  he  has  written  more  ;   he  sometimes  writes  more  eloquently. 
But  he  wants,  to  my  thinking,  that  pure  and  colorless  impartiality  of  inquiry  and 
judgment  which  is  Huxley's  distinguishing  characteristic.      There  is  a  certain 
coarseness  of  materialism  about  Tyndall  ;  there  is  a  vehement  and  almost  an 
arrogant  aggressiveness  in  him  which  must  interfere  with  the  clearness  of  his 
views.     He  assails  the  orthodox  with  the  temper  of  a  Hot  Gospeller.     Perhaps 
his  Irish  nature  is  partly  accountable  for  this  warm  and  eager  combatiy;ness  : 
perhaps  his  having  sat  so  devotedly  at  the  feet  of  his  friend,  the  great  apostle 
of  force,  Thomas  Carlyle,  may  help  to  explain  the  unsparing  vigor  of  his  contro- 
versial style.     However  that  may  be,  Tyndall  is  assuredly  one  of  the  most  im- 
patient of  sages,  one  of  the  most  intolerant  of  philosophers.     If  I  have  compared 
Huxley  to  the  pure  devoted  knight  riding  patiently  in  search  of  the  Holy  Grail, 
1   may,  perhaps,  liken  Tyndall  to  the  ardent  champion  who  ranges  th»:  world, 
fiercely  defying  to  mortal  combat  any  and  every  one  who  will  not  instantly  admit 
that  the  warrior's  lady-love  is  the  most  beautiful  and  perfect  of  created  beings. 
His  temper  does  unquestionably  tend  to  weaken  Tyndall's  authority.     You  may 
trust  him  implicitly  where  it  is  only  a  question  of  a  glacial  theory  or  an  atmos- 
pheric condition  ;  but  you  must  follow  the  Carlylean  philosopher  very  cautiously 
indeed  where  he  undertakes  to  instruct  you  on  the  subject  of  races.     The  negro, 
for  example,  conquers  Tyndall  altogether.     The  philosopher  loses  his  temper 
and  forgets  his  science  the  moment  he  comes  to  examine  poor  black  Sambo's 
woolly  skull,  and  remembers  that  there  are  sane  and  educated  white  people  who 
maintain  that  the  owner  of  the  skull  is  a  man  and  a  brother.     In  debates  which 
cannot  be  settled  by  dry  science,  Huxley's  sympathies  almost  invariably  guide 
him  right :  Tyndall's  almost  invariably  set  him  wrong.     During  the  American  Civil 
war,  Huxley,  like  Sir  Charles  Lyell  and  some  other  eminent  scientific  men,  sympa- 
thized with  the  cause  of  the  North  :  Tyndall,  on  the  ether  hand,  was  an  eager 
partisan  of  the  South.     A  still  more  decisive  test  severed  the  two  men  more 
widely  apart.     The  story  of  the  Jamaica  massacre  divided  all  England  into  two 
fierce  and  hostile  camps.     I  am  not  going  to  weary  my  readers  with  any  repeti- 
tion of  this  often-told  and  horrible  story.     Enough  to  say  that  the  whole  question 
at  issue  in  England  in  relation  to  the  Jamaica  tragedies  was  whether  the  belief 
that  a  negro  insurrection  is  impending  justifies  white  residents  in  flogging   and 
hanging  as  many  negro  men  and  women,  unarmed  and  unresisting,  as  they  can 
find  time  to  flog  and  hang,  without  any  ceremony  of  trial,  evidence,  or  even  in- 
quiry.    I  do  not  exaggerate  or  misstate.      The  ground  taken  by  the  advocates  of 
the  Jamaica  military  measures  was  that  although  no  insurrection  was  going  on 
yet  there  was   reasonable  ground    to  believe  an  insurrection  impending;    and 
that  therefore  the  white  residents  were  justified  in  anticipating  and  crushing  the 


240  SCIENCE  AND  ORTHODOXY  IN  ENGLAND. 

movement  by  the  putting  to  death  of  every  person,  man  or  woman,  who  could  be 
supposed  likely  to  have  any  part  in  it.  Of  course  I  need  hardly  tell  the  student 
of  history  that  this  is  exactly  the  ground  which  was  taken  up,  and  with  far  great- 
er plausibility  and  better  excuse,  by  the  promoters  of  the  massacre  of  Saint  Bar- 
tholomew. They  said  :  "  We  have  evidence,  and  are  convinced,  that  these  Hugue- 
nots are  plotting  against  us.  If  we  do  not  put  them  down,  they  will  put  us  down. 
Let  us  be  first  at  the  work  and  crush  them."  The  Jamaica  question  then  raised  a 
bitter  controversy  in  England.  Naturally,  John  Bright  and  Stuart  Mill  and  Gold- 
win  Smith  took  one  side  of  it :  Thomas  Carlyle  and  Charles  Kingsley  and  John 
Ruskin  the  other.  That  was  to  be  expected  :  any  one  could  have  told  it  before- 
hand. But  the  occasion  brought  out  men  who  had -never  taken  part  in  political 
controversy  before  :  and  then  you  saw  at  once  what  kind  of  hearts  and  sympathies 
these  new  agitators  had.  Herbert  Spencer  emerged  for  the  first  time  in  his  life, 
so  far  as  I  know,  from  the  rigid  seclusion  of  a  silent  student's  career,  and  ap- 
peared in  public  as  an  active,  hard-working  member  of  a  political  organization- 
The  American  Civil  War  had  drawn  Mill  for  the  first  time  into  the  public  arena 
of  politics  ;  the  Jamaica  massacre  made  a  political  agitator  of  Herbert  Spencer. 
The  noble  human  sympathies  of  Spencer,  his  austere  and  uncompromising  love 
of  justice,  his  instinctive  detestation  of  brute,  blind,  despotic  force,  compelled  him 
to  come  out  from  his  seclusion  and  join  those  who  protested  against  the  lawless 
and  senseless  massacre  of  the  wretched  blacks  of  Jamaica.  So,  too,  with  Huxley, 
\vho,  if  he  did  not  take  part  in  a  political  organization,  yet  lent  the  weight  of  his  in- 
fluence and  the  vigor  of  his  pen  to  add  to  the  force  of  the  protest.  During  the  whole 
ot  that  prolonged  season  of  incessant  and  active  controversy,  wjth  the  keenest 
intellects  and  the  sharpest  tongues  in  England  employing  themselves  eagerly  on 
either  side,  I  can  recall  to  mind  nothing  which,  for  justice,  sound  sense,  high  prin- 
ciple, and  exquisite  briefness  of  pungent  sarcasm,  equaled  one  of  Huxley's  let- 
ters on  the  subject  to  the  "  Pall  Mall  Gazette."  The  mind  which  was  not 
louched  by  the  force  of  that  incomparable  mixture  of  satire  and  sense  would 
sorely  have  remained  untouched  though  one  rose  from  the  dead.  The  deli- 
cious gravity  with  which  Huxley  accepted  all  the  positions  of  his  opponents,  as- 
sumed the  propositions  about  the  high  character  of  the  Jamaica  governor  and 
the  white  residents,  and  the  immorality  of  poor  Gordon  and  the  negroes,  and  then 
reduced  the  case  of  the  advocates  of  the  massacre  to  "  the  right  of  all  virtu- 
ous persons,  as  such,  to  put  to  death  all  vicious  persons,  as  such,"  was  almost 
worthy  of  Swift  himself. 

On  the  other  hand,  Professor  Tyndall  plunged  eagerly  into  the  controversy 
as  a  defender  of  the  policy  and  the  people  by  whose  authority  the  massacre  was 
carried  on.  I  do  not  suppose  he  made  any  inquiry  into  the  facts — nothing  of  his 
that  I  read  or  heard  of  led  me  to  suppose  that  he  had  ;  but  he  went  off  on  his 
Carlylean  theory  about  governing  minds,  and  superior  races,  and  the  right  of 
strong  men,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  nonsense  which  Carlyle  once  made  fasci- 
nating, and  his  imitators  have  lately  made  vulgar.  I  think  I  am  not  doing  Tyn- 
dall an  injustice  when  I  regard  him  as  a  less  austere  and  trustworthy  follower  of 
the  pure  truth  than  Huxley.  In  fact  Tyndall  is  a  born  controversialist.  Some 
orthodox  person  once  extracted  from  Huxley,  or  from  some  of  his  writings,  the 
admission  that  "the  truth  of  the  miracles  was  all  a  question  of  evidence,"  and 
seemed  to  think  he  had  got  hold  of  a  great  concession  therein.  Possibly  the  ad- 
mission was  made  in  the  spirit  of  sarcasm,  but  it  none  the  less  expressed  a  be- 
lief and  illustrated  a  temper  profoundly  characteristic  of  Thomas  Huxley.  With 
him  everything  is  a  question  of  evidence  ;  nothing  is  to  be  settled  by  faith  or  by 


SCIENCE  AND  ORTHODOXY  IN  ENGLAND.  241 

preliminary  assumption.  I  am  convinced  that  if  you  could  prove  by  sufficient 
evidence  the  truth  of  every  miracle  recorded  in  Butler's  "  Lives  of  the  Saints,'' 
Professor  Huxley  would  bow  resignedly,  and  accept  the  truth — wanting  only  the 
truth,  whatever  it  might  be.  But  I  think  Tyndall  would  rage  and  chafe  a  great 
deal,  and  I  suspect  that  he  would  use  a  good  many  hard  words  against  his  oppo- 
nents before  he  submitted  to  acknowledge  aloud  the  defeat  which  his  inner  con- 
sciousness already  admitted.  And  yet  I  think  it  would  be  at  least  as  difficult  to 
convince  Huxley  as  it  would  be  to  convince  Tyndall  that  Saint  Denis  walked 
with  his  head  under  his  arm,  or  that  Saint  Januarius  (was  it  not  he  ?)  crossed  the 
sea  on  his  cloak  for  a  raft 

I  do  not  know  whether  it  comes  strictly  within  the  scope  of  this  essay  to  say 
much  about  Herbert  Spencer,  who  is  rather  what  people  call  a  philosopher  than 
a  professionally  scientific  man.  But  assuredly  no  living  thinker  has  done  more 
to  undermine  orthodoxy  than  the  author  of  "  First  Principles."  I  have  already 
said  that  Spencer  is  much  more  widely  known  in  this  country  than  in  England. 
During  the  first  few  weeks  of  my  sojourn  in  the  United  States  I  heard  more  in- 
quiries and  more  talk  about  Spencer  than  about  almost  any  other  Englishman 
living.  Spencer's  whole  life,  his  pure,  rigorous,  anchorjte-like  devotion  to  knowl- 
edge, is  indeed  a  wonderful  phenomenon  in  an  age  like  the  present.  He  has  la- 
bored for  the  love  of  labor  and  for  the  good  it  does  to  the  world,  almost  absolutely 
•without  reward.  I  presume  that  as  paying  speculations  Herbert  Spencer's  works 
would  be  hopeless  failures ;  and  yet  they  have  influenced  the  thought  of  the 
whole  thinking  world,  and  will  probably  grow  and  grow  in  power  as  the  years  go 
on.  It  is,  I  suppose,  no  new  or  unseemly  revelation  to  say  that  Spencer  has  lived 
fbr  the  most  part  a  life  of  poverty  as  well  as  of  seclusion.  He  is  a  sensitive,  si- 
lent, self-reliant  man,  endowed  with  a  pure  passion  for  knowledge,  and  the  quick- 
est, keenest  love  of  justice  and  right.  There  is  something  indeed  quite  Quixotic, 
in  the  better  sense,  about  the  utterly  disinterested  and  self-forgetting  eagerness 
with  which  Herbert  Spencer  will  set  himself  to  see  right  done,  even  in  the  most 
trivial  of  cases.  Little,  commonplace,  trifling  instances  of  unfairness  or  injustice, 
such  as  most  of  us  may  observe  every  day,  and  which  even  the  most  benevolent 
of  us  will  think  himself  warranted  in  passing  by,  on  his  way  to  his  own  work, 
without  interference,  will  summon  into  activity — into  positively  unresting  eager- 
ness— all  the  sympathies  and  energies  of  Herbert  Spencer,  nor  will  the  great  stu- 
dent of  life's  ultimate  principles  return  to  his  own  high  pursuits  until  he  has  ob- 
tained for  the  poor  sempstress  restitution  of  the  over-fare  exacted  by  the  extor- 
tionate omnibus-conductor,  or  seen  that  the  policeman  on  duty  is  not  too  rough 
in  his  entreatment  of  the  little  captured  pickpocket.  As  one  man  has  an  unap- 
peasable passion  for  pictures,  and  another  for  horses,  so  Herbert  Spencer  has  a 
passion  for  justice.  All  this  does  not  appear  on  first,  or  casual,  acquaintance  ; 
but  I  have  heard  many  striking,  and  some  very  whimsical,  illustrations  of  it  given 
by  friends  who  know  Spencer  far  better  than  I  do.  Indeed  I  should  say  that 
there  are  few  men  of  great  intellect  and  character  who  reveal  themselves  so  lit- 
tle to  the  ordinary  observer  as  Herbert  Spencer  does.  His  face  is,  above  all 
things,  commonplace.  There  is  nothing  whatever  remarkable,  nothing  attractive, 
nothing  repelling,  nothing  particularly  unattractive,  about  him.  Honest,  home- 
spun, prosaic  respectability  seems  to  be  his  principal  characteristic.  In  casual 
and  ordinary  conversation  he  does  not  impress  one  in  the  least.  Almost  all  men 
of  well-earned  distinction  seem  to  have,  above  all  things,  a  strongly-marked  in- 
dividuality. You  meet  a  man  of  this  class  casually ;  you  have  no  idea  who  he 
is ;  perhaps  you  do  not  even  discover,  have  not  an  opportunity  of  discovering, 


242  SCIENCE  AND  ORTHODOXY  IN  ENGLAND. 

that  he  is  a  man  of  genius  or  intellect ;  but  you  do  almost  invariably  find  yourself 
impressed  with  a  strong  individual  influence — the  man  seems  to  be  somebody — 
he  is  not  just  like  any  other  man.     To  take  illustrations  familiar  to  most  of  us — 
observe  what  a  strongly-marked  individuality  Charles  Dickens,   John   Bright, 
Disraeli,  Carlyle,  Lord  Ellenborough,  Lord  Salisbury  have  ;  what  a  strongly- 
marked  individuality  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  had,  Wendell  Phillips,  Charles  Sum- 
ner,  William  Cullen  Bryant,  Horace  Greeley  have.     Now,  Herbert  Spencer  is  the 
very  opposite  of  all  this.     All  that  Dr.  Johnson  said  of  Burke  might  be  conven- 
iently reversed  in  the  case  of  Spencer.     The  person  sheltering  under  the  hedge, 
the  ostler  in  the  yard,  might  talk  long  enough  with  him  and  never  feel  tempted 
to  say  when  he  had  gone,  "  There  has  been  a  remarkable  man  here."     A  London 
litterateur,  who  had  long  been- a  devotee  of  Herbert  Spencer,  was  induced  some 
year  or  two  back  to  go  to  a  large  dinner-party  by  the  assurance  that  Spencer  was 
to  be  there  and  was  actually  to  have  the  chair  next  to  his  own  at  table.     Our  friend 
went,  was  a  little  late,  and  found  himself  disappointed.     Next  to  him  on  one  side 
was  a  man  vjiom  he  knew  and  did  not  care  about ;  on  the  other  side,  a  humdrum, 
elderly,  respectable,  commonplace  personage.     With  this  latter,  for  want  of  a 
better,  he  talked.     It  was  dull,  commonplace,  conventional  talk,  good  for  noth- 
ing, meaning  nothing.     The  dinner  was  nearly  over  when  our  friend  heard  some 
one  address  his  right-hand  neighbor  as  "  Spencer."     Amazed  out  of  all  decorum, 
he  turned  to  the  commonplace,  dull-looking  individual,  and  broke  out  with  the 
words  "  Why,  you  don't  mean  to  say  that  you  are  Herbert  Spencer  ?  "     "  Oh, 
yes,"  the  other  replied,  as  quietly  as  ever,  "  I  am  Herbert  Spencer." 
?       I  have  wandered  a  little  from  my  path  ;  let  me  return  to  it.     My  object  is  to 
illustrate  the  remarkable  and  fundamental  difference  between  the  nature  of  the 
'antagonism  which  old-fashioned  orthodoxy  has  to  encounter  to-day,  and  that 
•which  used  to  be  its  principal  assailant.     The  sceptic,  the  metaphysician,  the 
"  infidel "  have  given  way  to  tbe  professional  savant.     Nobody  now-a-days  would 
trouble  himself  to  read  Tom  Paine  ;  hardly  could  even  the  scepticism  of  Hume 
or  Gibbon  attract  much  public  attention.     Auguste  Comte  has  been  an  influence 
because  he  endeavored  to  construct  as  well  as  to  destroy.     I  cannot  speak  of 
Comte  without  saying  that  Professor  Huxley  seems  to  me  grievously,  and  al- 
most perversely,  to  underrate  the  value  of  what  Comte  has  done.     Huxley  has 
not,  I   fancy,  given  much  attention  to  historical  study,  and  is  therefore  not  so 
well  qualified  to  appreciate  Comte  as  a  much  inferior  man  of  a  different  school 
might  be.     Moreover,  Huxley  appears  to  have  a  certain  professional,  and  I  had 
almost  said  pedantic,  contempt  for  anything  calling  itself  science  which  cannot 
be  rated  and  registered  in  the  regular  and  practical  way.     To  me  Comte's  one 
grand  theory  or  discovery,  call  it  what  you  will,  seems,  whether  true  or  untrue, 
as  strictly  a  question  of  science  as  anything  coming  under  Huxley's  own  pro- 
fessional cognizance.     But  I  have  already  intimated  that  the  character  of  Hux- 
ley's intellect  seems  to  me  acute  and  penetrating,  rather  than  broad  and  compre- 
hensive.    Perhaps  he  is  all  the  better  fitted  for  the  work  he  and  his  compeers 
have  undertaken  to  do.      They  have  taken,  in  this  regard,  the  place  of  the 
Rousseaus  and  Diderots  ;  of  the  much  smaller  Paines  and  Carliles  (please  don't 
suppose  I  am  alluding  to  Thomas  Carlyle) ;  of  the  yet  smaller  Holyoakes  and 
Bradlaughs.     Those  only  attempted  to  destroy  :  these  seek  to  construct.     Hux- 
ley and  his  brethren  follow  the  advice  which  is  the  moral   and  the  sum  ot 
Goethe's  "Faust" — they  "grasp  into  the  present,"  and  refuse  to  "send  their 
thoughts  wandering  over  eternities."     They  honestly  and  fearlessly  seek  the 
pure  truth,  which  surely  must  be  always  saving.     Let  me  say  something  more. 


SCIENCE  AND  ORTHODOXY  IN  ENGLAND.  2J3 

This  advance-guard  of  scientific  scholars  alone  express  the  common  opinion  ot 
the  educated  and  free  Englishmen  of  to-day.  The  English  journals,  I  wish  dis- 
tinctly to  say,  do  not  express  it.  They  do  not  venture  to  express  it.  There  is 
a  tacit  understanding  that  although  it  would  be  too  much  to  expect  an  intelli- 
gent journalist  to  write  up  old-fashioned  orthodoxy,  yet  at  least  he  is  never  to  be 
allowed  to  write  it  down.  It  is  not  very  long  since  one  of  the  most  popular, 
successful  and  influential  of  London  journals  sneered  at  the  Parliamentary  can- 
didature of  my  friend,  Professor  Fawcett,  M.  P.,  on  the  ground  that  he  was  a  man 
who,  as  an  advocate  of  the  Darwinian  theory,  admitted  that  his  great-grand- 
father was  a  frog.  Yet  I  know  that  the  journal  which  indulged  in  this  vapid  and 
vulgar  buffoonery  is  written  for  by  scholars  and  men  of  ability.  Now,  this  is  in- 
deed an  extreme  and  unusual  instance  of  journalism,  well  cognizant  of  better 
things,  condescending  to  pander  to  the  lowest  and  stupidest  prejudices.  But  the 
same  kind  of  thing,  although  not  the  same  thing,  is  done  by  London  journals 
every  day.  You  cannot  hope  to  get  at  the  religious  views  of  cultivated  and 
liberal-minded  Englishmen  through  the  London  papers.  "The  right  sort  of 
thing  to  say,"  is  what  the  journalists  commit  to  print,  whatever  they  may  think, 
or  know,  or  say  as  individuals  and  in  private.  But  the  scientific  men  speak  out. 
They,  and  I  might  almost  say  they  alone,  have  the  courage  of  their  opinions. 
What  educated  people  venture  to  believe,  they  venture  to  express.  Nor  do 
they  keep  themselves  to  audiences  of  savans  and  professors  and  the  British  As- 
sociation. Huxley  delivers  lectures  to  the  working  men  of  Southwark ;  Car- 
penter undertook  Sunday  evening  discourses  in  Bloomsbury ;  Tyndall,  with  all 
the  pugnacity  of  his  country,  is  ready  for  a  controversy  anywhere.  Sometimes 
the  duty  and  honor  of  maintaining  the  right  of  free  speech  have  been  claimed  by 
the  journalists  alone  ;  sometimes,  when  even  the  journals  were  silent,  by  the  pul- 
pit, by  the  bar,  or  by  the  stage.  In  England  to-day  all  men  say  aloud  what  they 
think  on  all  great  subjects  save  one — and  on  that  neither  pulpit,  press,  bar  nor 
stage  cares  to  speak  the  whole  truth.  The  scientific  men  alone  are  bold  enough 
to  declare  it,  as  they  are  resolute  to  seek  it.  I  think  history  will  hereafter  con- 
template this  moral  triumph  as  no  less  admirable,  and  no  less  remarkable,  than 
any  of  their  mere  material  conquests. 


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